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Dark GDK / A few questions considering DarkGDK

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Yodaman Jer
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Posted: 25th Sep 2009 18:34
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Hello all,

I've been using DarkBASIC Classic for nearly two years now, and I think I want to expand my programming knowledge to include C++. While I suck at math, I know that I can easily improve that field of knowledge and can then understand programming a little better.

Anyway, when I was looking to upgrade to DarkBASIC Pro I came across DarkGDK and saw that it was C++. So I did some research and found that it uses Microsoft's Visual Studio C++ software and DBPro. I really have just one question: is DarkGDK free? I know you have to own DBPro, so it will be $70 for me.

What about licensing? Do you have to pay in order to sell games or applications that you make with it?

Thanks to all who respond!

-Yodaman Jer.

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jezza
16
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Joined: 8th Mar 2008
Location: Bham, UK
Posted: 25th Sep 2009 18:49
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You don't have to own DBPro; it is completely free.
For commercial uses, a lciense of $30 is required.

Quote: " While I suck at math"

Call me stupid, but isn't half of programming maths?


While Bored Blog
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Yodaman Jer
User Banned
Posted: 25th Sep 2009 18:58 Edited at: 25th Sep 2009 19:02
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Quote: "isn't half of programming maths?"

Yes, yes it is. Which is why I need to improve on it (mainly geometry and I guess some trigonometry).

Do you have to renew the $30 license annually?

I've got another question...

How fast are the programs made with DarkGDK? I imagine that since it's C++ it runs a lot faster than anything made with either DBC or Pro.

-Yodaman Jer.

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Serial Velocity
16
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Joined: 24th Aug 2008
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Posted: 25th Sep 2009 19:07
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Quote: "How fast are the programs made with DarkGDK? I imagine that since it's C++ it runs a lot faster than anything made with either DBC or Pro."

I havent really compared them side by side but I'm sure DarkGDK is about 5-10% faster.

Quote: "Do you have to renew the $30 license annually?"

Nope.

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dark coder
21
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Joined: 6th Oct 2002
Location: Japan
Posted: 25th Sep 2009 19:31
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Remember that GDK is (virtually)the same as the libraries DBPro uses, however the language they each use(DBPro vs C++) are vastly different. It depends on what you write but you should expect at least a 100% speed gain on C++ variants of DBPro code and way more if you enable compiler optimizations, if your DBPro code does anything to do with editing strings then you can expect well-written C++ code to be tens of times faster and anything that does mass editing of arrays would likely be similar. Due to DBPro's inability to pass values by reference and its poor pointer support you can very easily write C++ routines to do things far more efficiently and you'll soon wonder why DBPro lacks such obvious features.

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Marsh0
15
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Joined: 18th Mar 2009
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Posted: 25th Sep 2009 20:27
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http://gdk.thegamecreators.com/?f=darksdkvsdbpro
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puppyofkosh
17
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Joined: 9th Jan 2007
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Posted: 25th Sep 2009 22:57
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Its free, the whole thing unless you want to sell your games. And the advantage with this is that you can use regular directx functions along with the DarkGDK ones (and other libraries too, like the fstream library which is probably better than the built in gdk file commands).
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Yodaman Jer
User Banned
Posted: 25th Sep 2009 23:20
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I am really intrigued by the sound of Dark GDK.

I've looked at some code examples, and while they sort of scare me I remembered that I felt the same way about BASIC when I was first starting out.

This is my plan:

I'm going to buy a laptop from Dell, probably one of their Studio laptops, so that I can stay up in bed coding late at night. Do you guys recommend installing it on a laptop, or should I put it on a desktop?

I've tried installing it on my current desktop, which runs XP SP2 and is about 6 years old. It didn't work, even though my system met the requirements. The .NET framework wasn't installing properly for Visual Studio 2008, and I tried everything. My computer just doesn't support it, hence why I wish to buy a laptop.

Thanks for answering all of my question!

-Yodaman Jer.

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Hassan
15
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Joined: 4th May 2009
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Posted: 26th Sep 2009 00:06 Edited at: 26th Sep 2009 00:07
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i have a laptop and it works just fine

my laptop: http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/me/en/ho/WF06b/321957-321957-3329742-89318-89318-3873829-3925415.html

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Mista Wilson
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Joined: 27th Aug 2008
Location: Brisbane, Australia
Posted: 26th Sep 2009 05:19
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Quote: "I've tried installing it on my current desktop, which runs XP SP2 and is about 6 years old. It didn't work, even though my system met the requirements"


How did it not work when you tried to install it, where in the process did it fail ? Did it get through to actually installing GDK itself, or did it fail on Visual Studio or DirectX SDK installs ?

GDK has a "delicate" (understatement I know lol) installer that requires things to be done in a specific order and for other system assets to be in certain places or it will fail, it really isnt hard though to set it up manually so that isnt a big deal.

Just a quick rundown on the basic order of isntallation for GDK :

1 - Install Visual Studio Express 2008 , making sure that all of it's pre-requisies are installed first.

2 - Run Visual Studio Express 2008 ONCE BEFORE you install anything else. It has to setup a bunch of environment variables that the subsequent packages require to complete their own installs.

3 - Install DirectX SDK August 2007, MUST be the 2007 SDK as GDK relies on now-deprecated libs for its networking(once you get it all working, you can use upto march09 directX sdk with some wrangling and dummy libraries - later SDK's than march09 remove a number of deprecated features that GDK relies on to operate)

4 - Install DarkGDK itself.

The above is for the downloadable installer version of GDK, which is not the latest version. The latest version is 7.4 and is available from a sticky at the top of the GDK forum, though it's installation is a little different and it is spread out in a couple of archives, as such its probably best to leave any updates until you get comfortable using the product.

Hope this helps some

If it ain't broke.... DONT FIX IT !!!
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Yodaman Jer
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Posted: 26th Sep 2009 06:12
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It actually had to do with the .NET framework. Apparently I needed it to be the 3.0 framework, I tried updating it, and it would get halfway through the installation (of the framework) and then give this message about 'installation failed'. This was months ago, so I don't know if anything changed.

All I know is that I shouldn't put it on that computer because a), it's outdated, b) it's only got 3GBs left of Hard Drive space, and c) it's a cruddy computer.

So I plan to just buy a nice laptop and to install it all on there. Thanks for listing the steps, that's REALLY going to help!

-Yodaman Jer.

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