Sometime back on another thread, I mentioned I had DarkBasic and would comment on it. Finally, i am ready to state a few observations on it....after re-siding my houe, and painting...blah,blah,blah.
Anyway, Darkbasic Classic is a product from the UK, actually written in c/c++. It provides an "easy" Basic approach to graphic games, according to the Vendor - The Game Creators . There are 2 flavors - Darkbasic Classic and Darkbasic Pro. The former is the "lite" version of the latter, even Classic came out first.
First, the pros. Its biggest pro is the price. MSRP is $50, but it can be found at lower prices. Darkbasic Pro is slightly more at $90.
Next, it really is simple Basic, except for loads of graphics commands to deal with 2D sprites, 3D objects, terrain matrices, camera, etc. No object-oriented programming at all - straight procedural.
Third, the enhancement pack provides the ability to build a distributable, license-free exe file.
Fourth, DB Classic does support graphic objects in .x or 3DS format, avi files and mp3 files.
Now for the cons. It really IS simple Basic, so some things Basic programmers expect are just not there.
File i/o is simple sequential. Period. To some degree it is offset by the build-in commands to load or save an entire array, or 3D objects or binary memory blocks.
Native data types are integers, floats and strings, and arrays of the same. the Integers appear to be 32-bit, and I am guessing the floats are too. Classic does not allow user-defined types or structures, although DB Pro does.
Documentation sucks big honking green goobers, and that's being nice. Fortunately, the site has some tutorials that helps a lot. The help, internal tutorials and examples are a bit cryptic, too.
The web-site does have two fairly lengthy tutorials on building an FPS, so it does have capability.
Overall though, for the $20 my son paid for it, it is worth it. One of the web-site tutorials goes through the entire process of creating an FPS and it helps explain of a lot the commands along the way far better than the provided help.
Don't consider this a complete and thorough review, however. I have only been able to mess around with it for an hour a day, two if I am lucky. But the price is very attractive.
Anyway, Darkbasic Classic is a product from the UK, actually written in c/c++. It provides an "easy" Basic approach to graphic games, according to the Vendor - The Game Creators . There are 2 flavors - Darkbasic Classic and Darkbasic Pro. The former is the "lite" version of the latter, even Classic came out first.
First, the pros. Its biggest pro is the price. MSRP is $50, but it can be found at lower prices. Darkbasic Pro is slightly more at $90.
Next, it really is simple Basic, except for loads of graphics commands to deal with 2D sprites, 3D objects, terrain matrices, camera, etc. No object-oriented programming at all - straight procedural.
Third, the enhancement pack provides the ability to build a distributable, license-free exe file.
Fourth, DB Classic does support graphic objects in .x or 3DS format, avi files and mp3 files.
Now for the cons. It really IS simple Basic, so some things Basic programmers expect are just not there.
File i/o is simple sequential. Period. To some degree it is offset by the build-in commands to load or save an entire array, or 3D objects or binary memory blocks.
Native data types are integers, floats and strings, and arrays of the same. the Integers appear to be 32-bit, and I am guessing the floats are too. Classic does not allow user-defined types or structures, although DB Pro does.
Documentation sucks big honking green goobers, and that's being nice. Fortunately, the site has some tutorials that helps a lot. The help, internal tutorials and examples are a bit cryptic, too.
The web-site does have two fairly lengthy tutorials on building an FPS, so it does have capability.
Overall though, for the $20 my son paid for it, it is worth it. One of the web-site tutorials goes through the entire process of creating an FPS and it helps explain of a lot the commands along the way far better than the provided help.
Don't consider this a complete and thorough review, however. I have only been able to mess around with it for an hour a day, two if I am lucky. But the price is very attractive.
