Lo All, I've been looking at the darkbasic site (www.darkbasic.com) and I just wondering if it's really as good as the site says it is? For instance: "Games that with time, can compete with commercial games currently on the shelf." "The BASIC programs are compiled into optimised scripts that run almost as fast as 'C'." I know this is probably bulls**t, but I was just wondering how fast is the compiled code from darkbasic compared to other languages, and do you think commercial games could actually be made from it? And what things can't it do that programming C/C++ DirectX can. Just curious Sorry if I sound like a newbie, but thats what I am. Thanks in advance.... Edited by - CoiN on 9/14/00 10:08:25 AM

quote: Original post by CoiN

Lo All,

I''ve been looking at the darkbasic site (www.darkbasic.com) and I just wondering if it''s really as good as the site says it is?

For instance:

"Games that with time, can compete with commercial games currently on the shelf."

"The BASIC programs are compiled into optimised scripts that run almost as fast as ''C''."

I know this is probably bulls**t, but I was just wondering how fast is the compiled code from darkbasic compared to other languages, and do you think commercial games could actually be made from it?

And what things can''t it do that programming C/C++ DirectX can.

Just curious

Sorry if I sound like a newbie, but thats what I am.

Thanks in advance....





Edited by - CoiN on 9/14/00 10:08:25 AM

Programs like this strive on the idea that what you are trying to do is limited and simplistic. If you do exactly what DarkBasic was built for, your program will be optimal and building it may be of ease. A really complicated game like a comercial game is never simple and always customized. Its not to say that DarkBasic will be incapable of producing a commercial game, but all its benifits become hassles. The more complicated a game gets, the more useless the script language and the more complicated it is to use. And any translated language, when handling lowlevel arithmatic and operations required to customize a game, is no where near as fast as compiled machine code.
Take a look at the links section, or the download section to get an idea of what you can do. Definately good for people who prefer the basic language. As for a beginner, I wouln''t confuse "easy to read" with "easy". I''d advise any beginner to find good easy to use libraries/engines (so many out there). and learn c.

cmaker

- its not the principle. its the money.

It looks like it is made to do FPS''s. Or possibly 3d driving games. You see, all these things are designed to make only one type of game. Klik & Play was designed to do single screen arcade games (space invaders, missile command, pong, breakout, and with some difficulty Donkey Kong). Games Factory is designed to make side scrollers. This DarkBasic you speak of is almost certainly for 3d newbies who have played Q3A or UT and want to make something similar. Well at least they won''t bother us as much. I think I should get it for false advertising, it says it is a programming language. It''s a scripting language for heaven''s sake! (This evidently signals that a) the development team was thick (not very likely really), or b) they target thick people who will be taken in by this rubbish)

Well, really whether their comments are true, it depends what they mean by almost. If they mean that the models have to be a quarter of the detail, the system has to be twice as fast, the resolution halved and the FPS halved, I don''t think that counts as almost. They also use the word ''hack'' every other sentence, which means they must be targeting clueless newbies. Hmm, they''ll probably make quite a bit of money out of these clueless newbies actually, by letting them make the dumb FPS they always wanted to make. I expect in about a years'' time we''ll have people saying don''t mock DarkBasic, Q3A was written in it, just like the person who said Win95 was written in VB (Yeah, the hell it was). The thing is, these things instead of making the newbies smarter, more intelligent individuals, which looking at a simple D3D program will, it instead prolongs their cluelessness, so when they want to escape into real programming, they will be only more the arrogant, having already made an FPS with this dumb piece of software. Well, I have ranted long enough, I''ll just go and bash some newbies

My first emoticon!

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sharewaregames.20m.com

I had a little look at one of those demos. Normally in demos, I keep IE running in the background, and an FPS, say, Jedi Knight works fine this way. However, I tried their little demo. The level was small, but it took forever to load from HD. Then the FPS was about (rough estimate, it was quite jerky and never became smooth at all) 13 fps. That is abominable, considering it was doing everything in hardware (according to the little box that pops up at the beginning saying this was made in DarkBasic, we are mega l337 haX0rs etc... Super ultimate programming language blah blah, and then the detail is utter crap. It is worse detail than Quake I. And that ran well on 640x480, in all software mode. So why is it so crap? I think the website is just hype.

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sharewaregames.20m.com

Guys, we must remember here what the word BASIC stands for:

BEGINNERS All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.

This system is designed for beginners to attempt to harness teh raw power of C++. However Microsoft is also helping this new revolution of the destruction of C++. Introducing c# ( c sharp) the supposed next evolution of c++. No longer will we use types, only objects. Thats not too bad. NO longer will the user be able to access windows memory , or use pointers either! here is a snippet from a microsoft engineer:

"Microsoft is in the process of building an entire new low-level infrastructure for Windows. This new infrastructure, when used, sits between the low-level Windows operations and user applications, managing the code execution. This infrastructure, labeled the .NET Common Language Runtime (or CLR for short), provides a level of encapsulation between the developer and the operating system, thereby making writing Windows programs simpler. No longer will the developer have to worry about low-level details such as memory management, pointer management, language differences, and other common annoyances.

Using the .NET Common Language Runtime, developers can no longer use pointers. (This is not an issue with ASP, although this note may raise some eyebrows among Visual C++ developers..."

C# runs off of the .NET system.


This DarkBASIC is just another way of going backwards in software engineering evolution. DOn''t add to this madness. Learn how a system works, learn a real programming language, like C++, and create real customized original games!

People who carete their games from scrach show creativness, originalism, indiviualism, and ingenuity. People who use "one-click-and-you-have-a-complete-3d-directx-game" technology show that they are lazy, and unimaginative. They are unable to create for themselves, but must survive by copying someone else''s work.
Thats my Rant.. sorry if I BOred you to tears....

to Code, or Not To Code

Lo All,

Thanks for your reply''s...

I''m not a total newbie to programming (well maybe i am ), I''ve Finished the ''Teach Yourself C'' Book by herbert schildt and I''m now half way through his ''Teach Yourself C++'' book. I''ve not done any game programming yet, and I''m gonna learn Win32 before I do.

I was just curious about Darkbasic because I wanted to do some basic games just for fun, but I dont think ill bother with it now.

Thanks again for the reply''s.

Cya''s

Just to let you know, I''m subscribed to the BlitzBasic egroup, and I was a BlitzBasic user on the good old amiga, there are a lot of DB''s bad because of xyz posts on there.

If you are considering doing some basic games then pop over to BlitzBasic.com tomorrow and pick up the demo, which is suppost to be very good. I do not know what it''s like at the moment as I''m not on the BETA testers list.

Just to let you know BlitzBasic on the amiga was a compiled basic interpreter, i.e. it made native executables. One of the best games I''ve played on the amiga was SkidMarks, this was wrote purly in BlitzBasic and was released as a commercail game, as well as having all the Made with Blitz Basic logos on it, it was fast.

BlitzBasic had a very basic 3D engine as an addon I think, it was not fast but for an amiga in 1990 ish it was brilliant. I''d reconmend you take a look at this hidden little gem, also if you goto the egroups.com site and look at the group blitzpc, there are some example files there.