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DarkBASIC Professional Discussion / Stagnant Community?

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flanque
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Joined: 10th Sep 2002
Location: Australia
Posted: 6th Nov 2002 12:53
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Perhaps I am being a cynic, but to me it seems as though the Dark Basic Professional community is really stagnant in comparison to the original Dark Basic community.

There's very little hype, "wow shots", or even the presence of much activity within the community.

It’s as though the community barely exists. Barely anything changes on the official web site, the forums lack any real enthusiasm and DBS as an organisation seems to be in a state of suspended animation.

Of coarse these are just my observations so please don’t flame me for it. I just thought, given the hype of the language before it was released, there would be a surge of popularity and community development on various projects. I mean it just seems as though there’s a real lack of community participation.

The competitions don’t seem to draw in anything from the developers that could be regarded as “innovative” for a Dark Basic project and the sample projects that ship with Dark Basic Professional truly lack anything inspiring.

In all honesty I am glade I haven’t ordered Dark Basic Professional at this point in time because it truly seems like dead money.

Just some food for thought.
:: Specs: AMD Athlon XP 1600+ (1.4GHz), 256MB PC133 SDRAM, Leadtek Geforce 2MX SH 64MB, SB-Live!, LG SWrks 775N 17", MS Natural Pro KB, MS Optical Mouse, Windows 2000 Pro (SP3), DirectX 8.1 ::
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MrTAToad
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Posted: 6th Nov 2002 13:17
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Hype is the bain of all software... Aside from that, I think the community is very active, especially making sure that the bugs are dealt with. In addition, most people need to get used to it; trying to see what works etc.

No doubt a lot more is happening at DBDN (which has the dubious honour of having to be paid for), that most people here aren't privvy to.

In addition its only arrive in the shops...

Some parts of the web site need updating (especially the News section).

Aside from that I think everything is tickety-boo.

As a side note, will there be any adverts in PC Format/Plus etc etc ?

Yes, I really am THAT good...
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pathfinder
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Posted: 6th Nov 2002 13:28
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Ive noticed its been a bit slow. But to be honest DB had lots of great level editors, so wow shots were quite easy. Things will warm up soon, ive been beavering away with my isometric map editor and Iam at least a week away before I can get to even designing plot, level sketches, characters. Much like the professional production houses, games just seem to take longer and longer to make even hobby ones .

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Innes
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Posted: 6th Nov 2002 13:36
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DB Pro is reviewed in the Christmas 2002 edition of PC Plus.

Value: 8
Features: 8
Performance: 7
Overall: 7

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ChipOne
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Location: Canada
Posted: 6th Nov 2002 18:32
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I'm going to interject here. I disagree that the community is "stagnant" but would venture to say that it is spread thin.

There are, at my last count, 6 forums competing for our time. I have time (barely) to interject on three of them (DBDN, RGT and here). There are users in each of these three forums that do not visit the other two. We're alive as a community, but stand as a community divided.

I think that RGT & DBS would benefit greatly by moving to a unified forum. I like some elements of this forum, some from DBDN, and some from RGT. I find it amazing that so much time is spent to maintain 3 seperate forums, all working on different technology...by the same people who are trying to add value to a product!

My suggestion would be this:
- use a unified login (as Rich is planning for some sites, as he's indicated)
- allow the user to select the message boards that appear on the main page (ie. I never go into the German board...why is it there for me? DBv1? don't care to venture there...in with the new!)
- if the user has subscribed to DBDN, they get additional options for forum topics (ie. special downloads section, DBDN exclusives)
- all old forums should be redirected to the new one (with a page explaining why)

There's a lot of us out here...just that not so many in each forum. If you're looking to see the 'wow shots' and the editors, tutorials, snippets, etc. popping back up, you first need to get everyone together.

Just my $0.02.

-= i only do what my rice krispies tell me to do =-
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Zed
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Posted: 6th Nov 2002 21:27
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I have to admit I'm not posting or coding much. All my projects are on hold due to DB Pro bugs.
Please Please Please release patch 3 soon.

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denki
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Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 6th Nov 2002 21:27
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A worldwide DB site is needed, and that my friend what you described, would be perfect.
GuyS says his is the US DBP site, who cares? We only need one worldwide site! This doesn't have to be the non Us site.
One site could provide support for all from RGT and DBS, orders could be made though RGT if US and DBS if elsewhere, I can't see why they wont!

denki
Kousen DPB RPG latest - Working on editors!
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rapscaLLion
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Posted: 6th Nov 2002 22:29
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Zed: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE stop saying that, Patch 3 is a Pre-Christmas release, and that's final. That means that it could be today, it could be a month from now.

I find GuyS's forums to be pointless now. The official forums are here, we don't need two official ones. All it does is split the users into two groups.

Anyway, I despise DBDN, partly because I can't afford it, (I think the prices are outragous), and partly because the non-DBDNers get pushed aside. No one bothers to update the main DB/DBP sites. We rarely see DBS members here, except for Rich, and so on and so forth. I feel neglected by DBS, where as before, I used to feel like part of a family. I have been "left out in the cold" while paying customers are toasty warm inside the DBDN house.

But to be fair to the community, DBP hasn't been out long, so there hasn't been enough time for wow shots. I can guaruntee you, it's hardly stagnant. At least I'm not...

Alex Wanuch
aka rapscaLLion
Get the DB Weekly Newsletter at www.dbwn.cjb.net
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ChipOne
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Posted: 6th Nov 2002 22:47
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rapscaLLion: I don't think that the non-DBDNers are pushed aside any more than the DBDNers are. What I mean is that no one really is.

Here's the thing: the DBDN users are more tolerant of things like bugs, betas and testing things out. When I wrote my time DLL extension for DBPro, I had friends of mine in DBDN try it out before I released it anywhere else. It's a much smaller community, basically composed of people with the money to be there -- I'll give you that -- but we certainly don't shut people out.

Look, I spend a lot of times in the forums, not as much as some of the others, but I do feel I contribute. I help others where possible in areas of my expertise, offer sample code, participate in contests (like the 20 line challenge) and I'm even adding source samples and clarification to the online documentation project.

On top of that, through DBDN, I have now filed over 50 bugs with DBP that you will never see or have to deal with as they have (all but a handfull) been resolved in the first two patches.

DBS is but a handful of people. They are real people too and get vacations and training opportunities and spend Christmas and birthdays with their families. This is not unreasonable. They are not, in my eyes, neglecting anyone. Lee even cancelled his trip and hung around to finish up things on patch 2 before leaving on vacation!

Zed: You're being held up by bugs? Which ones? How are your coding abilities? I have yet to find a bug that wasn't fixed on the quick by Lee/Mike when I provided them a solid coding example of what was causing the problem. They are quick to awknowledge an issue and let you know personally when something is fixed. Beyond that, I haven't even found many bugs that I couldn't find a workaround for. If you think finding workaraounds is different from any other language, please let me know the language and I'll counter with a dozen reasons why I don't use it.

[rant]
I find it incredible that so many people are quick to quip up a complaint about the fact that they can't continue their project because of *all the bugs in DBPro* but they offer little else to the community, don't actively participate in the forums, help others, provide code snippets, or post samples of programs they're working on.

This community is what we make it: if we sit around bitching about everything and don't work at making things better, guess what? We turn into a bunch of bitchy old men that don't have anything working well. What's the point of that?
[/rant]

It's easy to make things hard and hard to make things easy. What product could anyone, anywhere have put forward that would not come without complaint?

*sigh*

I really have to stop worrying over all these poopy-pants pessimists...

-= i only do what my rice krispies tell me to do =-
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Drunken Fingers
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Posted: 7th Nov 2002 00:14
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I have to get up at 7:00am for my day job yet stay up until 3:00 or 4:00am with DBPro.

hype >>> DBPro ROCKS!!!!

PS. If you don't see anymore posts from me, could be a stroke, heart attack, ulser, etc. You pick.
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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 7th Nov 2002 00:36
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Hmm... in my eyes the community here is more alive than the one on RGT or many of the other DB based forums - perhaps there arn't as many full releases and such, but if you noticed there is ALOT more coding going on in the small areas which no doubt a few months down the line will mean that there is a flurry of band new things to try out.

i think it is stupid people saying that they're putting projects aside until such-n-such happens, all software has bugs and if any of you expect to become professionals or such you can't just stop work cause something doesn't work exactly how you want it to.

a post like this is kinda disheartening really in all fairness, especially for those of us who are doin' our level best to do alot of things to actually help out alot.

everyday i hear "oh dbpro isn't good i'm waiting until patch whatever" ... quite frankly i never heard any of this belly aching, if something doesn't work then open up your code to the peeps here if you can't figure out how to achieve what you want, and someone here almost always knows what to do!

Anata aru kowagaru no watashi!
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ironhoof
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Posted: 7th Nov 2002 01:31
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Not entierly true I bought DBpro as soon as i got the money I even bought it preorder, I have bugs that keep me wondering exactly whats wrong,specifically I work in 2D I havn't seen much 2d anything in DBPro. Far as i got it to work was after about 30 minutes testing what I did wrong
and in the end it gave me a shrunken sprite even after I put a scale sprite command in it still shrank the first sprite I pasted. Ok now thats a reasonable report no?

I have patience even after people shrugged this off about 5 times before When I posted the bug and still to this day havn't responded on any idea's what could be wrong. Im cool with that though you cant be center of the universe everyday and someday someone will answer yea.

However I have looked through all the reasonings and errors and false errors, I have some truely unique ones including the infamous "^2" bug =P

-----\
There was a man on the stairs that wasn't there.
He wasn't there agian today I think he's from the CIA.
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ironhoof
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Posted: 7th Nov 2002 01:37
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Speaking of which - dose DBPro's clipping region diffrent I.E in DB when you specify the X2,Y2 in get image it was offset of what you put a little. "or was it on the money and this is that way?" MY question is what coudld cause DBPro not to grab an image cause about 90% of the time it displays nothing.

-----\
There was a man on the stairs that wasn't there.
He wasn't there agian today I think he's from the CIA.
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Paul J
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Posted: 7th Nov 2002 02:14
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Er Perhaps one of the reasons its been quiet here is because people like myself are having massive problems with signing up to the forum and are therefore unable to post.

I've tried with my hotmail email, I tried with my yahoo email - neither worked. Finally tried with my ISP email and it sent the password...

If half the people out there are having the same problems I did then this would be why I guess its quiet

Paul J

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rapscaLLion
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Posted: 7th Nov 2002 02:38
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ChipOne: I agree with most of what you are saying, but my opinion that I feel neglected stands. From my perspective, things started to die when DBDN came about.

Now there are certainly exceptions to what I said, especially you, so no one get mad at me.
And about Lee. He IS doing a great job, but we don't see him on the forums very often. In fact, I have only seen one of his posts on this forum!
Now from an outsiders point of view, (keep in mind I haven't used DBDN, and I am not intentially dissing it or anything) the DB team is busy babying the DBDNers with their "Daily Diaries" and instant updates to the forum whenever a member doesn't like something.
What I'm saying is that it SEEMS like the DBDN is taking too much of DBS's attention. It may not be true, but the fact is, that is my view.

Having said that, if anyone wants to buy me a membership feel free

*The above is my opinion, and while it may seem harsh, there is no offense intended to anyone, ESPECIALLY DBS*

Alex Wanuch
aka rapscaLLion
Get the DB Weekly Newsletter at www.dbwn.cjb.net
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Necrym
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Posted: 7th Nov 2002 03:22
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The community is still there and are not left out by the DB team on anything really. I am also a DBDN subscriber and the same problems here are on the DBDN forums with one exception - their is a bit more patience in sorting bugs out and testing new methods etc. Also beleive me there are no instant updates there either. THe DB team of couse are a little bit more active with DBDN members at present because of the issues you like to whine about - bugs and optimization. So dont be hard on DBS or on DBDN members where all in the same boat - just different cabins.

Be afraid..be very afraid were all being watched!!
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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 7th Nov 2002 03:57
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i dunno... i've never felt to excluded in that way - i mean from what i hear most people wait weeks for a reply from the team on problems and such, and i've personally never been waiting more than a day or so - and i tend to get sent back some pretty useable info or even code

perhap DBDN do get pamper'd a lil, probably don't but i mean think about what the daily diary must read like at this point ...

" Lee - Can't find the F**king bug anywhere, been up for almost 48hours now trying to find out why RGBR doesn't register the colour ... why does C++ have to be so cruel "

sides not to be funny, but for the fact we pay nothing we're getting outstanding feedback all the time about stuff that is being looked into - and should be remembered that there isn't a super team of 70 odd professional debuggers with a SuperKray, its a handful of guys doing the best they can on a systems no more powerful than ours.

i've not tried many of the 2D routines in DBpro yet thou so probably should it guess ... most problems i've seen tend to have simple solutions, just no one is really patient enough to find them - quite a few "wolf" bugs as it were

Anata aru kowagaru no watashi!
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ironhoof
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Posted: 7th Nov 2002 05:15
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Well good point about the wolf bugs, but dosnt the commands say you can do this?

load bitmap "320X240.bmp",1
get image 1,0,0,319,239
sprite 1,0,0,1:hide sprite 1
paste sprite 1,100,100

Dosnt that look logical? infact it should work WHILE yes there maybe another way to fix this bug but if it says it should work one way should it not work that one way?
infact the above example may work but i believe it dose not ive tried it already. in DB it works in DBP it dosn't. im sure there is Another way but i look at it like losing a feature cause you cannot use some commands that you should be able to use together.. i dunno just a little frustration... PRO's and CON's

-----\
There was a man on the stairs that wasn't there.
He wasn't there agian today I think he's from the CIA.
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ironhoof
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Posted: 7th Nov 2002 05:23
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Well its a bad example it dosnt work in both. heh but it was just an example of what i was saying anyway.. sorry if it sounded like im ranting im not..

-----\
There was a man on the stairs that wasn't there.
He wasn't there agian today I think he's from the CIA.
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flanque
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Posted: 7th Nov 2002 13:22
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Isn't it funny how threads just seem to veer off into weird directions?

After some consideration I think the major problem I have with the community as it stands is that it really is spread thin. Whilst I wouldn't frown upon other sites opening their own forums I do find that the DB/DBP and RGT forums are viewed as 'official' in some senses. I think there would be significant benefits of consolidating the community forums together, that way there's pretty much a central knowledge base for discussion and ideas. Right now there are like three different places to visit, each with their own messages, logins, forums and rules.

:: Specs: AMD Athlon XP 1600+ (1.4GHz), 256MB PC133 SDRAM, Leadtek Geforce 2MX SH 64MB, SB-Live!, LG SWrks 775N 17", MS Natural Pro KB, MS Optical Mouse, Windows 2000 Pro (SP3), DirectX 8.1 ::
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rapscaLLion
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Posted: 7th Nov 2002 14:59
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Not trying to be hard on anyone. Maybe it's just jealosy or something strange like that

Alex Wanuch
aka rapscaLLion
Get the DB Weekly Newsletter at www.dbwn.cjb.net
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flanque
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Posted: 9th Nov 2002 01:59
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Perhaps, but it still bewilders me that everything seems so dull and uneventful in the DBP community.

One would imagine given the success of DB1 that DBP would be warmly welcomed and embrassed.

Dunno, perhaps I am just being a cynic?

:: Specs: AMD Athlon XP 1600+ (1.4GHz), 256MB PC133 SDRAM, Leadtek Geforce 2MX SH 64MB, SB-Live!, LG SWrks 775N 17", MS Natural Pro KB, MS Optical Mouse, Windows 2000 Pro (SP3), DirectX 8.1 ::
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rapscaLLion
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Posted: 9th Nov 2002 03:05
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well, I am coding full force in DBP, I'm just not allowed to show my work yet

Alex Wanuch
aka rapscaLLion
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EdzUp
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Posted: 9th Nov 2002 11:20
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I agree the community does seem much slower than when the old DB Forum was up.

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Lee Bamber
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Posted: 15th Nov 2002 04:12
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In the words of the great Terry Pratchett - I am still not dead I have dedicated time where I should know better and sleep to go through the last three pages of DBPro forum and find bugs and post hellos. The bug a few entries ago was indeed a bug so thanks for that. The code you would use for DBPro is as follows:

load bitmap "me.tga",1
get image 1,0,0,319,239
set current bitmap 0
sprite 1,0,0,1:hide sprite 1
set sprite 1,0,1
paste sprite 1,100,100
wait key

Notice the set current bitmap to get you back to bitmzp zero. In DBPro you can draw sprites to any bitmap now. Also the set sprite command to switch off the blue screen and backsave modes so you can see your pasted sprite. The bug was that hidden sprites would draw hidden sprites. Not very effective. Now all sprites that are pasted are forced to be visible for the time they are pasted, before being restored. Keep em coming to lee@darkbasic.com - bug squasher extraordinaire.

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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 15th Nov 2002 05:27
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hehee... right now i have a mental piccy of Lee with a rolled up newspaper next to his machine

Hope no one got the wrong idea and that i feel everyone is like crying wolf about the bugs, cause i'm aware they are they - but most of the time people do things and forget they need to set something else up first ...
i know 2D in particular was a pain in the ass to do over avi until you setup the backdrop on and draw the 2d infront otherwise you can't clear the pasted sprite, this was demonstrated in a coversion of the Half-Life menu i did sometime back.

If a function doesn't do what it should, suchas the RGBR one not returning a value ... then oki because there aren't really any other functions to associate.
Hopefully the Manual is being updated, i'm not sure if it was just the demo users but the manual was scarely incomplete. And if i didn't have the DarkBasic Standard manual and a good working knowlage of functions already, there are alot of things i'd just be scratching my head over... suchas Types, the only thing i found about them is in the Data Type explaination.
As for the "as" data setter, really for people who are new to programming or even comming up from just DarkBasic - it isn't very clear exactly why they would want to use it over standard interger/string/float types.

Ya know really i've not seen much news over at RGT either lately, and that has alot more users than here ... ya know i'm not actually sure of many true flamewars on here yet, that might be why it seems a little boring

I'd love to see more 3D models and 2D artwork shown off here thou, god i'd love to see alot more work - kinda don't like my own, but love seeing other peeps

Anata aru kowagaru no watashi!
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Kale
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Posted: 15th Nov 2002 21:55
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Quote: "
and should be remembered that there isn't a super team of 70 odd professional debuggers with a SuperKray, its a handful of guys doing the best they can on a systems no more powerful than ours.
"


then why did we pay so much for DBPro!!!

What the flame does not consume, consumes the flame.
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AMD XP2100+, Geforce4Ti 4400, 512Mb DDR, Abit KX7, WinXP Pro
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