DarkBASIC Professional

Rating:
Summary: Best in class
Review: After trying several game engines, in the "affordable" class, DarkBasicPro is the only one without high end limitations. As another reviewer said, it is a wrapper for DirectX. This means you have all the capabilities of DirectX, without the complexities, including shaders, sound, media, collision detection, packaging, etc. And it gives a good frame rate! The package has matured within the last year, and many of the earlier defects have been corrected. (The manual still leaves room for improvement. Buy the Dark Basic book also, and you will be happier!)
Dark Basic Pro now requires DirectX 9.0. And for really fast action games, you will need a reasonably powerful PC. If you find any command limitations, (even though it has over a thousand commands), you can always write your own DLL, and add capabilities, such as Octrees to the engine (which they don't have yet.) There now are several third party add-ons, such as "TreeMagik G2" and other enhancement packs which greatly aid in game construction. Check out the Game Creators web site, and the forums!
There are other game engines which are simpler, and "spoon feed" the process to you. But once you get a little experience, you will be frustrated by the limitations caused by the watered down interface. Dark Basic Pro is not that much more difficult to use, and is tremendously more powerful and flexible.



Rating:
Summary: Excellent!!!!
Review: I am a professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago and I use this for my Game Programming class.
In my 15 years of being in the computer graphics field I have never seen a software package integrate all this high-end graphics capability, into a simple-to-use, yet real programming language that creates compiled code. Not only that, the compiled code can be bundled as an executeable that you can then distribute as a standalone running program. This is an excellent way for budding independent game programmers to get a start. Furthermore the online forum is EXCELLENT. I usually get an answer to my questions within half an hour! There are some real dedicated fans out there!

Things that my graduate students used to take a semester to write for research projects are now accessible with a simple command in this language. For example: Binary Space Partion Trees, Surround Sound, Forced Feed Joystick support, A multitude of camera manipulation capabilities, collision detection, model loading and animation, forward kinematics, toon shading, real time shadows, and the list goes on and on... I've even written code to enable stereoscopic rendering so that I can take the output of a dual-headed graphics card, feed it into 2 DLP projectors with polarizing filters. Now my students can write games in true stereoscopic 3D! I know I am not allowed to post web sites in a review, so if you want more info on how to do something like this do a google on geowall darkbasic.

The interesting thing about providing students with so much capability at their finger tips is that they tend to take it all for granted. My students were complaining that the system had this bug or that bug. The hot-shot students wanted to do the class project in C++ and OpenGL instead. So as an experiment, a few of them took an undergrad research class with me the following semester to try and rewrite the game that they had written in DarkBASIC Pro, in C++ and DirectX. A month later I asked them, "next year, when I teach the class again, should I use DarkBASIC or should I use DirectX and C++?" They all said DarkBASIC was the way to go. New students would be too bogged down on the tiny details to be able to understand the whole game development process in a semester. DarkBASIC Pro frees you to think about developing the graphics, the game play, the sound effects- not waste all your time hunting down pointer errors.

Also a great low cost modeling package to go with this is Milkshape. The DarkBASICPro website recommends 3D Canvas. All my students hated 3D Canvas. It was crashing all the time, had an unintuitive interface and created a kzillion windows registry entries making it impossible to use for multiple login IDs on a single Windows box. There were also frequent version changes where 3D models were no longer compatible. Very annoying.

Rating:
Summary: Once the shine wears off
Review: I have read the other reviews of this product, and wouldn't dispute any of those users experiences with it. There are however many things that become evident once the shine wears off and you try to go beyond the simple spinning cubes you can get running in ten minutes or so.

I have been using DarkBasic now for several months, and while I was initially as enthusiastic as most of the other reviewers, I have run into enough problems that only become apparent when you try to go beyond the basics that I feel compelled to submit a more balanced review.

For example.. while one review mentions the built in help system that has a brief description of each command, what they failed to mention was that this brief description is the only description of the commands available at all even in the printed manual. The printed docs and the online docs are one and the same, and they are not only brief, but provide circular definitions in many cases, and they are definitely not comprehensive descriptions of what each command does.

The reviewer also mentioned the extensive examples, but failed to point out that the examples are lumped into several huge programs that do nothing meaningful except to demonstrate one particular way to use each command and do nothing to help you figure out how to use each command in all possible ways. Again.. there is no comprehensive reference to all of the commands the language provides.

The online help forums are indeed helpful, but more to the point you will almost certainly have to go there to find out how to use the language. Sufficient information and examples are not provided in the box to use this language on your own, even if you are a professional developer.

Familiarity with Direct X will only help out so far. While DarkBasic Pro is really a thin wrapper for accessing the underlying functionality of Direct X, most of the familiar Direct X terminology has been hidden and replaced with new terminology that is never explained leaving you guessing and experimenting just to find out how a command is supposed to work.

Updates for the program are also few and far between. There are many bugs in the various commands that make entire sets of functionality impractical to use, and many of the DarkBasic forum members have games they would like to ship, but cannot do so until and unless updates are provided to make functionality that is advertised as being in the product already work.

Word is that there may be an update sometime around the fall, but if you are used to using other development tools and getting frequent patches, give some thought to how this kind of infrequent update policy will impact your schedule. You should also check out their online forums and make sure that the features you think will make your development cycle go smoothly work as advertised. Some of the documented commands have actually been removed from the language, although they are still listed as valid commands and provide no indication that they have been disabled when you try to use them (other than simply not working).

My feelings about this product are not entirely negative. It is a very useful tool for rapid prototyping of 3D experiences, and it's a great way to explore Direct X concepts. As the teacher who wrote an earlier review said, it allows you to focus on the game aspects without worrying about the low level details, and it is also very cost effective.

There is also an SDK that allows you to expand the language by writing a DLL in C++, and there are many such free and inexpensive third party DLL's to expand the language beyond the basics.

But it falls short as a professional development tool primarily in the areas of documentation and simply working completely as advertised. You would probably find that you can get your idea implemented halfway five times faster than in some other game engine, but you might also find that after getting halfway there, something doesn't work and you need to spend a lot of time trying to come up with a workaround or having to redesign things using different commands.

In short.. if you just want to experiment with and learn about 3D, this product is perfectly suitable. If you want to use it to develop a professional game, or you want something that just works out of the box and doesn't require a lot of guesswork and experimentation, you may end up dissapointed.

Rating:
Summary: Great for beginners
Review: I have tried other game development systems like 3DGamestudio,Blitzbasic and 3Drad but none of them can touch DBPro. A complete beginner can pick up the software and make a simple game in a day. The package is simple but also includes all the features used in professional games like BSPs and shaders.

Rating:
Summary: Good product, bad manual.
Review: In reviewing this product, I would like to fairly say that I have not written a single complete program using this product yet.

Now, that scentance could be a double edged sword, it could meen I am incompetent, or it could meen there is something wrong with darkbasic pro. What I like to think is that dark basic pro has thoroughly flawed documentation. Just as Peter Patterson said in his review. The programing lanuguage is great and very easily allows you to write software very fast, yet, when you are stuck, the manuals are no help.

Many of the commands do not work as predicted, and same functions seem to be implemented differently for different commands. The 3D rotation commands can drive you nuts. The coordinates system also seems to be a bit unpredictable.

I love the programing language, and that is why I gave it four stars, but they realy need to work on the documentation and help files.

I heard there is an update, hope the documentation update is up to expectations.

Rating:
Summary: Awesome!
Review: In three days of using this program I made. (note: I had never used Dzrk BASIC before)

A 3d pong game
A first person shooter (with
a calculator with buttons (harder than it sounds)

This IDE is great, the language is great, and the community is even better.

-Cyberflame

Rating:
Summary: Awesome!
Review: Look no further for an easier language to learn, DarkBASIC Pro (DBPro) is by far the easiest language in the market today. The language is procedural and not object oriented, it contains many of the "old school" BASIC commands such as DATA, RESTORE, GOTO, GOSUB plus many modern features such as pointers and user-defined data types. This language is even used in introductory programming courses in many educational institutions all over Europe because of its ease of learning.

If you are planning to develop your own games for commercial purposes, it will be good to know that your games will be license and royalty free, and all games can be distributed as .EXE files with no need to have a runtime application.

In terms of power for developing games I can tell you that it is a very strong and fast language. You can witness its power by going through the many demos with source code included on the bundled CD as well as their website darkbasicpro.com.

Creating your programs is very simple using their Windows-based Integrated Development Environment (IDE), this is one of the many differences between this language and its little brother DarkBASIC.

What types of games can you create? mostly anything you can imagine: 3-D games, First Person Shooters (FPS) such as Quake, Unreal Tournament and Half-Life, Role playing games (RPGs), 2-D scrolling games (a la R-Type), Maze Games (Pac-Man), Multi-player, Online games, Educational, your imagination is the limit. There's even a best-selling professional driving simulation program developed in England using DBPro (http://www.thegamecreators.com/?f=dts), so you get the idea on the quality level you can reach using this relatively inexpensive development tool.

DBPro is not drag and drop, let's be very clear, but the language commands are intuitive and easy enough to understand for anyone without exposure to programming. To have an idea, I'll show you a 4 line program that creates a 3-D cube and rotates it on it's Y axis, something that would require hours using other programming languages:
MAKE OBJECT CUBE 1,100
DO
YROTATE OBJECT 1,OBJECT ANGLE Y(1) + 0.1
LOOP
The parameters that follow the commands (e.g. 1,100) are easily understood by simply looking at the context-sensitive HELP menu, summoned with F1 while highlighting the command (In this code example the 1 is the object number assigned to the cube and 100 is the cube size.)

There's a 30-day full-featured downloadable demo version of DBPro on their website. The HELP menu has all the commands available with brief instructions on their purpose. The full version has even working versions of code examples (showcase examples) for every command plus thousands of sample images, maps, sound effects, sprites, etc. to get you started real quick with your own games. I'd recommend downloading this demo to get a good taste of the language and determine if it is for you.

Make sure to download the DBPro patch from their website as soon as you install the CD, to have the latest and greatest release. The DBPatch can not be applied to the demo version though.

The only negative comments I have about this product is their language documentation included in the box. It could be more detailed and extensive. The good thing is that the DBPro community is growing and there are many resources for learning on the Internet. Amazon has a good introductory book on DarkBASIC (with some DBPro on it), ISBN 1592000096, but I think this book still lacks many advanced features since it was written mostly for DarkBASIC. If you are not familiar with 3-D terminology I would recommend to purchase an introductory book in this subject, or do an Internet search for this topic before getting your hands in the 3-D commands of DBPro.

Recommended for game enthusiasts, beginners and to-be professionals.

Rating:
Summary: Easy and fun to learn, powerful, educational.
Review: Look no further for an easier language to learn, DarkBASIC Pro (DBPro) is by far the easiest language in the market today. The language is procedural and not object oriented, it contains many of the "old school" BASIC commands such as DATA, RESTORE, GOTO, GOSUB plus many modern features such as pointers and user-defined data types. This language is even used in introductory programming courses in many educational institutions all over Europe because of its ease of learning.

If you are planning to develop your own games for commercial purposes, it will be good to know that your games will be license and royalty free, and all games can be distributed as .EXE files with no need to have a runtime application.

In terms of power for developing games I can tell you that it is a very strong and fast language. You can witness its power by going through the many demos with source code included on the bundled CD as well as their website darkbasicpro.com.

Creating your programs is very simple using their Windows-based Integrated Development Environment (IDE), this is one of the many differences between this language and its little brother DarkBASIC.

What types of games can you create? mostly anything you can imagine: 3-D games, First Person Shooters (FPS) such as Quake, Unreal Tournament and Half-Life, Role playing games (RPGs), 2-D scrolling games (a la R-Type), Maze Games (Pac-Man), Multi-player, Online games, Educational, your imagination is the limit. There's even a best-selling professional driving simulation program developed in England using DBPro (http://www.thegamecreators.com/?f=dts), so you get the idea on the quality level you can reach using this relatively inexpensive development tool.

DBPro is not drag and drop, let's be very clear, but the language commands are intuitive and easy enough to understand for anyone without exposure to programming. To have an idea, I'll show you a 4 line program that creates a 3-D cube and rotates it on it's Y axis, something that would require hours using other programming languages:
MAKE OBJECT CUBE 1,100
DO
YROTATE OBJECT 1,OBJECT ANGLE Y(1) + 0.1
LOOP
The parameters that follow the commands (e.g. 1,100) are easily understood by simply looking at the context-sensitive HELP menu, summoned with F1 while highlighting the command (In this code example the 1 is the object number assigned to the cube and 100 is the cube size.)

There's a 30-day full-featured downloadable demo version of DBPro on their website. The HELP menu has all the commands available with brief instructions on their purpose. The full version has even working versions of code examples (showcase examples) for every command plus thousands of sample images, maps, sound effects, sprites, etc. to get you started real quick with your own games. I'd recommend downloading this demo to get a good taste of the language and determine if it is for you.

Make sure to download the DBPro patch from their website as soon as you install the CD, to have the latest and greatest release. The DBPatch can not be applied to the demo version though.

The only negative comments I have about this product is their language documentation included in the box. It could be more detailed and extensive. The good thing is that the DBPro community is growing and there are many resources for learning on the Internet. Amazon has a good introductory book on DarkBASIC (with some DBPro on it), ISBN 1592000096, but I think this book still lacks many advanced features since it was written mostly for DarkBASIC. If you are not familiar with 3-D terminology I would recommend to purchase an introductory book in this subject, or do an Internet search for this topic before getting your hands in the 3-D commands of DBPro.

Recommended for game enthusiasts, beginners and to-be professionals.

Rating:
Summary: Easy and fun to learn, powerful, educational.
Review: Look no further for an easier language to learn, DarkBASIC Pro (DBPro) is by far the easiest language in the market today. The language is procedural and not object oriented, it contains many of the "old school" BASIC commands such as DATA, RESTORE, GOTO, GOSUB plus many modern features such as pointers and user-defined data types. This language is even used in introductory programming courses in many educational institutions all over Europe because of its ease of learning.

If you are planning to develop your own games for commercial purposes, it will be good to know that your games will be license and royalty free, and all games can be distributed as .EXE files with no need to have a runtime application.

In terms of power for developing games I can tell you that it is a very strong and fast language. You can witness its power by going through the many demos with source code included on the bundled CD as well as their website darkbasicpro.com.

Creating your programs is very simple using their Windows-based Integrated Development Environment (IDE), this is one of the many differences between this language and its little brother DarkBASIC.

What types of games can you create? mostly anything you can imagine: 3-D games, First Person Shooters (FPS) such as Quake, Unreal Tournament and Half-Life, Role playing games (RPGs), 2-D scrolling games (a la R-Type), Maze Games (Pac-Man), Multi-player, Online games, Educational, your imagination is the limit. There's even a best-selling professional driving simulation program developed in England using DBPro (http://www.thegamecreators.com/?f=dts), so you get the idea on the quality level you can reach using this relatively inexpensive development tool.

DBPro is not drag and drop, let's be very clear, but the language commands are intuitive and easy enough to understand for anyone without exposure to programming. To have an idea, I'll show you a 4 line program that creates a 3-D cube and rotates it on it's Y axis, something that would require hours using other programming languages:
MAKE OBJECT CUBE 1,100
DO
YROTATE OBJECT 1,OBJECT ANGLE Y(1) + 0.1
LOOP
The parameters that follow the commands (e.g. 1,100) are easily understood by simply looking at the context-sensitive HELP menu, summoned with F1 while highlighting the command (In this code example the 1 is the object number assigned to the cube and 100 is the cube size.)

There's a 30-day full-featured downloadable demo version of DBPro on their website. The HELP menu has all the commands available with brief instructions on their purpose. The full version has even working versions of code examples (showcase examples) for every command plus thousands of sample images, maps, sound effects, sprites, etc. to get you started real quick with your own games. I'd recommend downloading this demo to get a good taste of the language and determine if it is for you.

Make sure to download the DBPro patch from their website as soon as you install the CD, to have the latest and greatest release. The DBPatch can not be applied to the demo version though.

The only negative comments I have about this product is their language documentation included in the box. It could be more detailed and extensive. The good thing is that the DBPro community is growing and there are many resources for learning on the Internet. Amazon has a good introductory book on DarkBASIC (with some DBPro on it), ISBN 1592000096, but I think this book still lacks many advanced features since it was written mostly for DarkBASIC. If you are not familiar with 3-D terminology I would recommend to purchase an introductory book in this subject, or do an Internet search for this topic before getting your hands in the 3-D commands of DBPro.

Recommended for game enthusiasts, beginners and to-be professionals.

Rating:
Summary: Fast Game Design
Review: With C++, for new game programmers, the problem usually is debugging and eventually giving up.

With this language, I program so fast I need artists to help. (ok sounds cheesy... I'm skilled in C++ and IBasic already, so this language was a bit tough... why? BECAUSE IT'S IN PLAIN ENGLISH! and I'm not used to languages anyone can read) I learned it in an hour, reading the help file in the demo, while ignoring my programming teacher.