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Newcomers DBPro Corner / A few questions about DBPro and DSDK

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Miguel S Melo
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Posted: 1st Aug 2005 19:06
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I am looking at buying a "fun" gamedev solution. I worked professionally as a coder in the games industry a few years back and I've decided to buy something that will allow me to knock about a few ideas just for the heck of it. But with enough headspace to publish something if I ever come up with something worthwhile...

So, as an alternative to conitec's 3d gamestudio, I have been considering TGC's dbpro and, more recently, dark sdk. I do have a couple of direct questions about these products:

1) I found that dbpro has picking functions against objects. Is it possible to pick against the bsp level? Does the bsp block picking of entities? Can I get more info on what the rah hit (specific polygon hit, texture of that poly)?
2) If I have a boned character playing a certain frame of a certain anim, and want to move to a different anim (walk to idle, for example). Can I blend animations together or can dbpro only interpolate between neighbouring frames?
3) How do compile times scale? I mean, I do a small change to one of the dba files. Does the compiler have to build the whole thing? How long does it take, roughly, to build a full-sized project?
4) How bad is memory leaks in dbpro? I have coded a lot in VBasic and ref counting there is quite good as long as you don't have cyclic refs. I am curious about dbpro.
5) I found in the net horror stories about how buggy db pro is. These posts were for the most part, over a couple of years old so I expect a lot has changed. Is dbpro fairly stable these days? Have you gotten around the problem of no IDE sources?
6) Debugger: in the demo, the debugger window only shows a very small number of code lines. Has it been updated so that you can see more of the source code? Can you add/remove breakpoints during execution (couldn't find it). I also found that on some demo, when I clicked to see the variables, dbpro just closed. Is this a bug fixed in 5.8?
7) What BSP formats does dbpro currently handle? The product tour mentions a few but then says some may not be available at the time of writing (?).
8) Riftspace, Starwraith and Firewall: were they done on dbpro? Dark sdk?
9) Finally, regarding the SDK: Does Dark sdk have EVERY SINGLE feature/function that dbpro has?

Many thanks for your help in advance!

Regards,

Miguel
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Xolatron old
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Location: The Star Forge Language: DBpro
Posted: 2nd Aug 2005 02:30
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1) Sorry, I don't understand what you mean.
2) Yes, DBpro can interpolate frames.
3) The compiler has to rebuild it each time, but this might change if one of the developers follows up on one of his journal entries. Compile times for me (2.5 Ghz processor) take about 15-20 secs for a 50 KB source file
4) I haven't encountered any, and although a few commands produce them (ug reports) I think u5.8 fixed some loop slowing down from these; settings are changed in a modifiable INI file
5) DBpro still has bugs, but most can be worked around. Often the bugs are very obscure. Bugs change almost every patch, but are getting better.
6) The debugger is different, but still not as useful as it could be.
7) Its own - it has a buggy but useful .x to .bsp converter included, and one other format that I am aware of(Half-life maybe?)
8) Either DBpro or DarkSDK or both, I don't know which.
9) I'm not sure. However, DarkSDK still has bugs that DBpro doesn't, and some DBpro does. It might have some commands that work where DBp doesn't. I don't have it, so I might be wrong

-Xol

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CattleRustler
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Posted: 2nd Aug 2005 08:03
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1)yes the bsp is treated as a pickable object, and yes entities can be treated as objects as well - at least via Apexnow's CSM importer.

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master programmer
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Posted: 3rd Aug 2005 06:43 Edited at: 3rd Aug 2005 06:47
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You sure have a lot of questions. I don't use DBpro, I use DB Classic, which is also pretty good. Out of both of them, I would say pick both of them up. They have slightly different features and different languages, but with both of them you can't lose.

3) The compiler compiles each time on DB Classic as well. Which only takes about 15-20 (like previously stated). This doesn't take long at all, and, I don't compile until I'm finished any way. It all just depends on the size of the .dba file and if you're compiling as a Final or just basic .exe

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Miguel S Melo
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Posted: 3rd Aug 2005 16:31
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Yes... I can be quite "quizzy"

Thanks for all the answers, but I would still like a clarification concerning question 2:
I know that dbpro can interpolate frames, but can it interpolate frames that are NOT SEQUENTIAL? e.g. I have a model with 2 animations
Frames 1-10 walk
Frames 11-20 idle

Say I am halfway through the walking cycle (frame 6) and I let go of the keyboard and want to go into idle. I would like the character to slowly lower its arms to, say, frame 11 and then move on with the idle cycle. I don't want to snap to frame 11. Is this possible?

I have been playing around with the demo and found that switching on shadows on one obj (in a 2 obj scene, about 1000 polys total) brought down the framerate to almost half in a Centrino 1.4 w/ radeon 9200. Is this mode that costly?

Also, the newton demos seem to be quite slow. Is this a problem with newton or the interface with dbpro?

Once again many thanks.


Miguel
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Xolatron old
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Posted: 4th Aug 2005 19:06
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Yes, DBpro can interpolate between ANY two frames, but you will have to program the model to keep looping after the interpolation.

Yes, shadows are quite costly in DBpro.

I haven't used Newton, sorry.

-Xol

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Keaz
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Posted: 4th Aug 2005 19:33 Edited at: 4th Aug 2005 19:37
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FX shaders can be used for faster shadows.

Newton/Physics in general is usually quite costly as far as performance goes. TGC is soon to introduce a new physics pack for DBPro and FPSC. FPSC was for the most part coded in DBPro as I understand it as were the Games you mentioned, I don't know if they've been updated using the SDK. If your prior background is C++ I'd reccomend the SDK if it's BASIC then go for DBPro.

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master programmer
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Posted: 5th Aug 2005 05:52 Edited at: 5th Aug 2005 05:58
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You can go from a frame to another frame higher or lower slowly, just dec a variable, and use that variable you decreased as the frame number.

Such as:

frame#=20
do
if frame#=>11
dec frame#,1
set object frame 1,frame#
endif
loop

Or something to that effect. But, as an experienced programmer I'm sure you won't have any problems with that


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Miguel S Melo
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Posted: 5th Aug 2005 11:00
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@master programmer: ehehe, you are having a go at me with the experienced programmer bit

Anyway, looking at the code posted I'm sure you would go from frame 20 down to 11 _passing every frame in between_. This you can plainly do, I had no doubt.

What I meant was if you could go from the character stance stored in frame 20 to the stance it has in frame whatever by interpolating the bones or verts and _without going through stored frames_. Only then can you merge from halfway in one motion anim (say walk) to another (say the idle) cycle.

Xolatron seems to indicate you can.

Will be something like



Take 2 frames to go from stance in frame 6 to stance in frame 11 without using the intermediate frames?

Once again thanks!
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master programmer
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Posted: 5th Aug 2005 11:42
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Exactly. I had know idea you could even do interpolation! Or even the idea that it existed, in fact I had never heard of it!

Like I said, I'm a DarkBASIC Classic user, and this command works with DB Classic as well as DB Pro. Like in the thread DB v DBpro, DB is just like DBpro, just a older and harder to use (that's my opinion, don't wanna start a war ).

Your command you used should work. It moves fluently from two frames, as you specified 6 to 11. And it does it smoothly. I'll have to remember this command for my own games *once again I didn't use my game's name David R.

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Miguel S Melo
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Posted: 6th Aug 2005 03:01
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Incidently, after a lot of deliberation, I ordered Dark Game SDK rather than DBPro... I went for praticality over fun in the end. I am still playing with the dbpro demo though and may buy it anyway later.

So I'll certainly will be sticking around.

PS - I just wish TGC would quickly send me my download instructions. I placed the order around 3pm and 10h later still no info (I know it can take 24h... but my paypal transaction has already completed...)
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master programmer
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Posted: 7th Aug 2005 00:09
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I'v never ordered off the internet before.

So, what company(s) did you work for when you were coding?

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Miguel S Melo
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Posted: 7th Aug 2005 00:15
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I worked for EA for 2 years, then for Psygnosis/Sony for 2 years, Vivid Image for 6 months then Take 2 Interactive for a short spell (they closed the studio down). Finally I worked for 3Dlabs (the videocards guys) in the D3D drivers team before coming back to Portugal.

Since then, sadly, no more professional gamedev for me - there's none over here.
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Posted: 8th Aug 2005 07:56
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You worked for EA? Sweet. What games have you made?

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Miguel Melo
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Posted: 8th Aug 2005 15:40
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(What a mess... with my dgsdk purchase I had to create a different account with a different email, so I'll reply from this account from here on.)

At EA UK I worked in 3 games: Fifa Soccer Manager and two unreleased titles. One was a very good looking but somewhat stale action adventure (not unlike Resident Evil) that got canned, and the prototype for an arcade footie game that, as far as I know, never got greenlighted.
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Xolatron old
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Posted: 9th Aug 2005 01:23
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Yes, DBpro (and DarkSDK, I believe) has interpolation. There's a flag to set somewhere, and then set frame should slowly change to the specified frame.

-Xol

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