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OK after surveying more of the key features and other things. I'm pretty set on buying the SDK. I just need to know a couple of things more, if anyone can give some straight forward answers about these I'll buy the product now.

Do we have access to the low level DirectX objects, can I retrieve a pointer to LPDIRECTX(blah) and use it to do my own writing to the DirectX object, and a followup to this is do we have access to the render loop. Looks like dbSync() is what's called to render, but I want to be able to create my own class that uses the DirectX object directly and interject my code onto the rendered scene.

Lights? Does the engine support realtime lighting? And is limited to the amount of real time lights the DX let's you define?

Thanks for any answers you can provide I would be happy to purchase the engine once I get these answers.

You do have access to both the Direct3D and the Direct3DDevice pointers, but currently no access to the render loop. I've made a few suggestions to Mike that he liked that should allow us to do this in future versions.

Lights? Limited to DX lights I'm afraid. If you need more than that you'll need to work out another way to do it - maybe reuse lights that are farthest away.

About lights, as IanM said, reuse lights that are farthest away. So basicly, you could set up 'areas' of light, and change the lights depending on what area you are in.

EDIT: I mean zones.

@IanM thanks for the insight, so if we don't have access to the actual "render" loop I'm assuming we can still create objects using straight DX methods and have it generated in game through the games own render call? I mean as long as I have a way to create something using DX and have it rendered to screen I would be fine, especially if I can use straight DX methodology.

@Both, thanks for the reply I'm starting to like the community a lot. Really friendly and helpful people. I was thinking of zoning the lights, its just in the feature list I didn't see anything that said "real-time" lighting so I just wanted to make sure that was available. If I have to play some Tom Foolery or something thats perfectly ok with me, as long as its available.

Thanks again, guys. I may purchase this engine tonight hopefully its a 24 hour activation thing as I am eager to get my hands on the code.

On a side note: what does the current terrain engine with the DarkSDK use? I hope it uses heightmaps and a texture map for the entire land as that's what I'm used to using.