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I decided to start this thread following a series of discussions where different people hinted at this very same subject. In a nutshell, we should consider lobbying for TGC to make the source to dgdk available to the gdk registered developers.

I mean, the dgdk is not their core business (dbpro and maybe fpsc) are. It is, however, the backbone of their main products and thus, any improvements here, immediately wield benefits for the complete range of TGC products.

I believe, seeing as Lee and Mike are always snowed under with something or other, that it would be beneficial (not only for the end developers such as myself) but for TGC as well if people could contribute in bugfixing the sdk. There is an incredible amount of C/C++ talent in this forums with users that would be more than capable of fixing the bugs that get on their particular project's nerves and sending these fixes in for Lee+Mike to weed out and incorporate (at their discretion) in the main "official" codebase, leading to more timely updates, at a fraction of their time.

This is an approach that has worked well for other engines (Cipher, Torque etc) and I cannot see why it wouldn't work here.

Opening the sdk would not jepardise their main products, as the wouldn't be opening the "bind code" for dbpro. All that would be needed was:

a) A new licence. Something similar to a LGPL (in that you have to contribute changes to the API back to TGC for their consideration for including or not in the main releases), but with the source closed to paying customers.
b) A new forum with read rights granted ONLY to people who have bought the dgdk (i.e. synchronized with this item from the downloads in our profile), so we can discuss the entrails of the thing and swap fixes about.

And we'd be all set!

So, what do you - forum dwellers - thing? And the TGC peeps?

I very doubt anything will come of it...

Well oviously it would be like the second arrival of Jesus to the cristians. Teh codez!!one!1! Seriously I thnk itwould solve alot more problemsthat it causes. This comunity is very active and TGC don´t seem to take advantage of that. I would. Free workers! (well ish)
Though there is one question about the price thugh. Torque costs €100 and DGDK costs €60. Personally I don´t mind paying extra to get the code ontop of what I´ve paid already.

Actually Torque (and Cipher) cost 100 USD, which is € 85.

DGSDK costs €45 + VAT (which in my case came to about €53) - but you can only make freeware games with that version: the price to get a licence akin to the other two engines is €150 + VAT (i.e. about €180) for Dark Game!

So, I really think there would be no need for a price hike either. If TGC really _really_ want, they could make the source available to the 150 euros crowd (not a great idea if you ask me) but maintaining the price would not be unthinkable.

Ah. I was thinkink about the freeware croud. I.E me. Must have got euros confused with $. That Torque defenatly sounds interesting though.

I have 20+ years experience in programming (pick a language). With 15 years experience in C/C++.

I am willing to spend some time each week trying to deal with bugs in the Dark SDK, if I have access to the code.

A forum for swapping solutions would be particularly useful for testing fixes in different environments. We have multiple PCs at home with a variety of configurations (what does a programmer do for fun? program, of course). But I don't have all the display adapters that would need to be tested.

I vote for this concept and urge TGC to adopt it. I think it would help them (and us).