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Hi, I love DB, been using the free one for a while, finally decided to jump in and buy the Pro version and also the expansion pack thingy - total of £125 inc VAT so I'm hoping to be able to program and stuff now.. already seen that Darkpacker and the Box2D thing are things I could really use, but I need to justify this spend to myself before I spend another £100. Also since those upgrades will.. let me make one tidy EXE file and... do things in 2D like pinball or a snooker game... well I *really* need to be sure that DBPro can already do some cool things and that I don't *need* to spend another £100 to do such basic things that would have been really nice in the core system... I'm hoping they make certain things easier, and that, for example, you can still program good 2d games and that you can still hide your graphics files (sprite sets) so people can't always replace them with some pornographic set whenever I release a free DB game.. would be annoying but anyway I guess I'll have more questions later.

First though - I downloaded all the software. Installed DBPro. Activated it. Installed the upgrades (hoping that doesn't make it flag all the exes as a virus to Norton from now on) and I'm looking at the extras packs and installing those as best as I can.
- some of the modules are an exe file to run. Some are zip files to unpack - I have to guess where to put things like the "ClothParticles" folder. The EXEs don't know where I installed DarkBasic. I don't know if I need DarkBasic Classic or if I should ignore it... these are all official releases, right?

Anyway, DBPro runs. I loaded "roomdemo" and it works. Also some basic 2d thing with one type of rock to shoot. Is it intentional that they're both so simple? It feels like there was a competition to write a complete game in under an hour and those were runners up.. if I had written them I'd have expanded them a little unless I was really hating the language. Just seems odd.

Finally - my problem. I loaded "RoadTerrain.dba" to see what it was, and pressed F5. It errors with "Duplicate PERFORM CHECKLIST FOR EAX EFFECTS in EnhancementsFREE.dll and Enhancements.dll!
Command in 'EnhancementsFREE.dll' command-table unrecognised (PERFORM CHECKLIST FOR EAX EFFECTS%0%?PerformCheckListForEAXEffects@@YAXXZ%)" which isn't helping me any. Wow, now that I pasted it I can read the full error message (???) and I'm guessing I can delete EnhancementsFREE.dll but its not clear from the editor and what if I'm wrong?? Please don't think I'm a lazy programmer but I have to start from examples that actually run, if I'm to learn anything.

Any advice on how to fit all these things together more easily would be appreciated. Also I can see that DBPro has links to the store, but do I have to be online to use it? What if I'm on the road working overnight, and want to program on my laptop in the hotel? Will I have problems copying the whole program folder to my laptop? Will it need activating again?

Finally I know that since I bought it, it will have some serial embedded in it or something to prevent bad people giving it away to everyone etc. However - when I compile programs with it, is there anything that could let someone get my name or email address that goes into the compiled code? Data Protection laws would say "no" but looking at how the program seems to run I need to check. I want to write free games for people but I very much value my privacy, and I want to feel I'm not worse off having paid all this money than I would have been had I simply copied DBPro off someone else.

Please please don't think I'm complaining, I'm new and very excited but I'm stuck! I hope to get good at this and in the future be able to solve other peoples problems, but this is where I am right now. Please help and advise me! Thanks!

I would just start with a simple setup of DBP without any extras and add to it one at a time as and when you are ready for something new. I know that means unistalling stuff and starting again but trust me it'll be a lot less complicated and if one thing goes wrong you'll know exactly what it was you did.

Welcome to the community! I look forward to seeing what you can do

Good advice, thanks! I'm just really excited having all this stuff, but I should really start from the basics and work my way up through it all. I'll be back asking questions as I go, I'm sure!

Your problem with the compiler throwing that Duplicate error is you have two DLL's that have something named exactly the same.

If you've been using the free version and you just installed over the top of that, it could be the problem..

I don't think (?) you should be needing both EnhancementsFREE and Enhancements DLL's if you have a commercial version of it after all.

Starting fresh is the best advice to go with for now.


I'm vaguely sure you can install DBPro on your laptop if you want as well, but you'd have to double check that. Pretty sure you'd have to be online to use the store (else how would you buy things?)

AS for your privacy concerns.. I think I've seen it mentioned somewhere that there is a unique ID generated with a compiled program so that TGC can trace that program back to who compiled it, and who owned the compiler, I am guessing in order to track malware/virus issues and potentially aid law enforcement in that manner.

I don't think it actually stores any personal information though.

Really? Creepy!

This is correct, you can have as many installations as you want (I use three!) the unique ID is compiled into your exe.