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ello
I been thinking of moving over to Darkbasic from XNA. After asking a few questions over at the DB section some people recommend I look into Dark DGK. While it looks interesting I have a few concerns.
If I buy the darkbasic bonanza now and decide to use Dark DGK later will all Darkbasic the add-ons (FPS creater ,Dark voice ext) work with Dark DGK or will I need to buy them again.
Also I see that DarkDGK is free but I was told you need to pay fees to release a title using the software. Now the DGK net (for 30) download says there is a licensing free option, do any of you guys have more info on this?
Thanks

FPS Creator is not an add-on, it's a standalone product. If you have model packs for FPSC, you can load the models in Dark GDK (models only, not the whole game that you create in FPSC, you'll need to re-program that). Some people on the forum might have figured out how to load complete FPSC levels in Dark GDK but I haven't seen such topics in a long time and I don't know if it's still possible.

Dark GDK .NET is again a different product (and a different programming language). The purchase page clearly explains the difference between the licensing options: Dark GDK is free but you need to buy a commercial license for 30 dollars if you want to release commercial games made with it. Dark GDK .NET costs 30 dollars by default but it already contains a commercial license.

http://www.thegamecreators.com/?m=view_product&id=2128&page=upgrade

Some plugins that are available for Dark Basic Professional have Dark GDK versions but not all of them. You'll need to decide which plugins you will need and find out one by one if they have a DGK version or not. (There is a page on the TGC web site which lists plugins for Dark GDK but it may not be completely up-to-date, it's better to check the pages of the individual plugins to find out which versions they have.)

If you buy a plugin that has both versions, you probably get to download both versions. For example I bought Dark Lights and I was offered both the DB Pro and the GDK version for download. I have no idea which versions are in Bonanza.

About Dark Voices: I once briefly tried its demo. The part that generates the phoneme files is a standalone program, not a plugin, so that will work, but the codes examples they give with it are implemented for DB Pro. Maybe it would be possible to program an importer which reads the phoneme file generated by it (after all the feature page says "Mouth data stored in a text file, easy to parse by many languages"), I haven't looked at it that deeply. If they give code examples for DB Pro, it should be possible to convert that for Dark GDK. However, to use Dark Voices in a game you also need character models which are prepared to move their mouths according to the phonemes, otherwise it's no use.

EDIT: Just edited out the reference to PureGDK as it was off-topic.

There are plenty of other plugins for both the DarkGDK and Dark Basic around these forums, many of which are free.
Here are some that I know about.
http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=165423&b=5
http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=74762&b=5
http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&b=8&t=145404&p=39
http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=184441&b=22

More thoughts: You don't need to buy the Bonanza pack to try out either Dark Basic Professional or Dark GDK, since both you can download for free. Recently there is even a free version of FPS Creator. Try them and if you like either DB Pro or Dark GDK, then you can have another look at the Bonanza pack and order it if you like.

I read the contents of the Bonanza pack and actually most of the software included are standalone applications, not add-ons. The ones that are plugins are Dark Shader, Dark Physics, Dark Lights, Dark AI and Extends, and only Extends doesn't have a Dark GDK version, the others do, so you don't need to worry about compatibility. However, I'm not sure if both versions of the plugins are in the pack. You could send an e-mail to TGC to find out, there is a contact form in the "About" menu.

I see in the meantime that maybe I answered your question from the wrong point of view. People usually ask about converting from DB Pro to Dark GDK, but you come from XNA. Whether you choose Dark Basic Professional or Dark GDK depends on which programming language you prefer, Basic or C++. Advantages and disadvantages can be discussed but in the end, you know which you like better.