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Hello,
My game is very large in models and I need a second opinion. I use Blender, GIMP, and LMMS in my games for content. I'm about 5 minutes away from buying dark imposters and would like to know if DBPro can run a high end PC game worthy of a store shelf? I plan to use the imposters to run the game somehow. Can someone please explain how to use Imposters? I've been working on a game since January and am trying to give it a speed boost. How do you use imposters to increase fps? Does using this require coding? An example would be nice.

What I meant was, Can using DBP without imposters be fast enough to be completely playable with normal speed? I have to activate my credit card for around 30mins before I can make any purchases.

EDIT: And do FPSC models work in DBPro? Can you sell games using Dark Matter meshes?

Many thanks for your help.

Bought it.
Guess I'll find out soon.

Let your game be any quality, you need a publisher to get it onto 'thee selves'. Otherwise you may just simply sell it online or by post on your own.

Imposters is for boosting games by creating sprites of far away objects ---> ya, it will boo!-st...

Most of the latest games are for "high end", the question really is your game high end, or just has got high end needs?

I wouldn't call it well... quality quite yet but it is terrible with freezing up. I bought imposters last night and will see if it helps.

Right now it has so many freeze ups that I wouldn't consider it playable at all. Perhaps imposters can improve speed? How would you write a code with imposters plugin? Can anyone give me a bit more information on how to use it please?

The best thing you can do instead of buying products to make up for your problems is to code in a more efficent and logical manner. You need to decide what you want to do before you actually attempt to do something.

I'd agree with David. If you have problems, disable all the fluff code (shadows, textures, sound, LOD, &&c) and recompile. If you still have problems, disable more features, and repeat until you're running nicely. Now that you have a baseline, enable features one-by-one and debug as needed. Sometimes (and I'm not saying do it when you start debugging) it's better/faster to just gut a whole set of functions or a subsystem and write them from scratch, ensuring you finish while everything is still fresh in your head, than it is to try to find/correct problems. Get the code you have sorted out before adding even more code/DLLs!

For impostors, google "level of detail" (or LOD) and start from there. Imposters/LOD are great methods to improve performance, but one must be careful to not overdo it. Too much "optimization" and you can spend more time sorting out what to render and what not to render than you gain in performance.

As for DBP being a "game engine"...it's not an engine, it's a programming language which you can use to build an engine.
If you're looking for high-end stuff, you'll need to drop DBP and go with something like C++ with a good helping of shaders and even some ASM.
DBP is great as a tool for things like prototyping, or even making mid-level games, but not for making the latest greatest most eye-popping game. You can even use it to make a really good prototype which you can use to pitch the game to the big game houses.

Isn't DBP a commercial games programming language?
I haven't a problem with C++ just a short learning curve on it. I like DB better than spending years at the time trying to make a 3d object or something with C++. Thanks for sharing your thoughts though...

Is there any way to make a game with DBP with a bunch of features and fast rendering? Is there anything similar to DBPro that can run much faster?

DBP is a commercial programming language...you hand money over to TGC and get a license to use DBP...thus both parties are engaged in commerce. Or, if you prefer, you program a game using DBP then sell licenses for it to other people...again commerce.

I feel your pain concerning various flavors of C. I was "raised" on ASM and QBASIC, and trying to get my head to shift from procedural to OOP never seems to end well. However, if you want to make games which are high-end by modern standards, you pretty much have to learn it, ASM, and shaders (which are usually written in something resembling C++).

You can make a game with tons of features using DBP and have it run just fine. The trick is to think outside the box, it all comes down to how clever you are with your code. This is even true with ASM and C++. If you figure out a way to save a single ASM instruction it may not seem like much, but over a second you could be saving yourself millions of CPU cycles which can be used elsewhere. As for "rendering", you really only need to render to the screen about 30 times/second to get smooth movement. Much more than that is a bit overkill.

There is a particular flavor of BASIC offering many of the same features DBP does, AND also offers inline ASM. Due to the simple fact that you can code in ASM it may be faster in certain areas. But I won't plug it here on the TGC site, and the company who sells it doesn't accept the brand of credit card I use so I haven't tried it out.

That said, the beauty of both DBP and the "other BASIC" is that you can write DLLs in C++/ASM/&&c for areas which need higher performance or better features. If you haven't already done so, do a forum search for "Sparky's Collision" and give his DLL a try. It's great stuff and shows the versatility of DBP's expansion capabilities.