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It seems that Lee & Mike have grand plans for the future, that is all well and good but personally I ask that they focus their efforts more on existing problems. The new 3D Pipeline is a good example of what they should be working on. DX9 support is all very nice (Mike said that it wanted to add it as a priority) but I think that first:

- Add Flexibility to existing commands: People have been asking for a more flexible GHOST command for years, the current FADE & GHOST combo effect looks cheap and it can't be that hard to add an ALPHA parameter to the ghost command. Other examples include the limited TERRAIN options which need boosting. The BSP system doesn't support features such as Q3 shaders etc. and can't cope with even slightly-nonstandard problems. For example DB puts a white plane through the entire scene at the baseline of a level so if you have a well going below the base of the level for example, you can't go into it as there is just a white plane near the top.

- Fix the commands that don't work well: It seems that DBS doesn't test all the commands properly. The bug where SET MUSIC VOLUME didn't work for many sound types is clear evidence of this (now fixed in Patch 2 ). The biggest problem at the moment is that the GET IMAGE command is SOOOOOOO SLOOOWWWW. It effectively null and voids the possibility of using it often in a loop and it is a very useful command. The multiplayer commands are unreliable and some of the 2D commands have peculiar results. The 2D graphics are extremely and unnecessarily blurry at low-resolution.

- Make the language behave more predictably: Some commands, although related to each other, used often behave weirdly because of the way DB's core is structured (I guess) - the problem of the INK command ignoring the colour setting is stupid. Other things include DBP doing its "house-keeping" in a DO...LOOP. It should be up to the user to decide when DBP does any clearing up, not DBS.

Please concentrate on getting the core right, that is why many expert coders left to go to Blitz instead. Mike: They won't "come crawling back" until the core of DB is fixed.

- Status Updates: We would like more correspondance from Lee & Mike, occassional extracts from their work diaries for example.

I have no comment on everything except your last point:
I agree, we need to see more of Lee and Mike! AFAIK they spend all their time in the DBDN

The dbdn ... imagine paying money just so you can get db updates and find out they dont work before the rest of us do.

i must admit DBPro is gathering dust on one of my shelves purely because its not possible for me to use it because of the core commands simply not working or 'working' erratically! for example the 'prepare matrix texture' command quite frankly is a joke! i emailed them with an explanation of the bug, i posted about it on here, just after v1.0 came out but still no bug fix, i can tell they've done something with it in v1.01 because its not as bad as it was but it still doesn't work as stated. It makes me wanna tear my hair out!

tried the 1.02 patch yet? alot of fixxes in that
ya know i've not noticed hardly any of the bugs within Pro so far, don't ask me what it is but its been reporting back figures oki, and most of the builtin commands i've learnt to bypass from DB and make my own cause they we're too slow most of the time. Only two current bugs i've actually encountered point(x,y) doesn't report back red and the Mouse commands seem well odd - my lovely RTS orbit code works in Pro, however they've ether turned the sensitivity RIGHT down or something becuase the state in which it works is quite peculiar

i do have a gripe about it ... and kinda a biggie - its about the graphics.
everything in pro seems to have a subtle AA on all the time, it also blurs the edges of fonts and make them look nasty sometimes. I'd like to be able to use MipMapping, FSAA, Overlay Blending - however i'd like to personally CHOOSE to use them rather than be forced into it.
I mean may make the graphics appear softer but i'd rather the nice harsh graphics of DarkBasic and just add an effect if/when i want to use it
sorry but about the only thing that has actually pisses me off about it.

Yes, my main problem is with the graphics - I'm using it a lot more after Patch #2, and am gradually getting used to it.

I was rotating a mountain (created by Byrce 5, put into Cinema 4D and then converted to .X), and you could see
through half of it.

I dont know whether it was the conversion processes that produced this or whether its the graphic engine - either way it was rather annoying.

Please don't let yourself get so upset about DBPro. There are bigger things in the world to worry about If you have some bugs and gripes, email me at lee@darkbasic.com and I can tell you exactly what is going on and whether it is a bug that has been or will be fixed. As our default screen is a stretched window, AA comes as standard. I did this as it is the best way to test your applications full screen whilst still being in a windows, non-exclusive mode. Either switching to a window or exclusive mode will remove the stretching AA. The image AA is due to the way DBPro likes to load images as textures. You can supress this behaviour by adding a ,1 parameter to the LOAD IMAGE and GET IMAGE commands, allowing you to import a perfect DBV1 style version of your image. Even if you have found a workaround and want it clearly explained in a future help patch, email me as it all helps to the greater good!

Now you can't argue with that... , that just shows how honest the DBS People really are.