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Hello!
I'll try to not make this as newbie sounding as possible. I've had experience with 3D programming, but the engine I've used in the past (in my opinion) is basically dead to me, and I'd like to continue working in a new environment.

Anyway, I've noticed with DarkBasic Pro, there's a lot of features and plugins available for use. The current sale for the Game Studio basically would give me everything that I'm used to currently in programming. However, I program in .Net and I'd need to slap money down to extend for that, but that's neither here nor there I guess.

However, my questions involve the 3D World Studio. Would I be correct to assume that it would be similar to Hammer, the editor used in the original Half-Life? I enjoyed making maps in BSPs much more than by individual mesh (I should say within my own editors ugh) and I was wondering if this was similar, with features for customizable entities and the such. I noticed that I can also import .X models into 3DWS, so I can use external models when appropriate. I noticed other neat features (such as lightmaps) that would be neat to have - and terrain - but I'm wondering if overall, it would be similar to Hammer.

My second question involves Nuclear Glory. My old engine used nothing but raytracing for collision, which proved fast but inaccurate. How easy is sliding collision with Nuclear Glory? I noticed that I can do eclipse/mesh collisions, which I presume would be for sliding collision. I also noticed raycasting, which would be useful for bullet collisions and figuring out what kind of platform/material the user is standing on. Are bounding box/sphere collisions also included?

Thank you much for all of your help. I've been researching, and I'd like to get into programming again. However, I'm at most an average programmer and I prefer design a lot more. But if I can get out-of-the-box sliding collisions in (like I did with BSP back in the day), that's the hardest part all done.

Here's a sample of what I did years ago.
I'm itching to work back into programming, but I refuse to be constrained to the same headaches I've encountered before. Plus, I'd rather not throw away hard-earned cash on something without knowing more details :3

Thank you!

if you are thinking about getting GDK.net, I don't think it really gets the updates that it deserves and is a bit behind the other incarnations of DBPro (DarkBasic Pro being the most commonly updated of the bunch).

Regarding 3DWS: While it is a great tool, I have run into problems with the models it exports (incorrect vertex normals) and it only supports vertex-lighting (no lightmapping) on custom models (imported .x). I have entirely switched to using Evolved's mapscape (a free alternative) which is very similar (no terrain, but DOES support lightmaps for custom models). It can be downloaded here: http://www.evolved-software.com/mapscape/mapscape

Nuclear Glory is an old plugin, and I don't think it works properly with the recent versions of DBPro. However, there is a free alternative called Sparky's collision which can be found here on the forums. It supports sliding collision, as well as raycasting (and spherecasting) amongst other things. It wont give you "out-of-the-box sliding collisions", but with a few lines of code that can easily be setup.

If you decide to go with TGC products, then I would say DBPro is the way to go. While DBPro has it's faults, It is an easy language to get into and allows you to create really impressive things quicker than with most other languages.

Don't get you hopes up, but I read on Evolveds forum that he MIGHT add terrains to MapScape. *crosses fingers*