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Total newbie to game development and "The Game Creators" products, lots to learn and looking forward to getting started. I investigated several options online before purchasing the DGS Bonanza and the FPS Creator Bonanza packages, and downloaded everything this morning after my order was approved.

Is there a step-by-step install guide to getting all of the products included with the DGS Bonanza Bundle installed, updated and operational and if so, where might I find it? My frustration level is steadily increasing as I work my way through trying to get everything installed...

I've managed to (I think) work through most of the issues I've come across so far by searching the site/forums, but I'm about 1/2 way through installing the products available for download and I keep running across issues caused by a simple lack of documentation.

For example, right now I'm trying to figure out where to unzip the individual .zip files included in the InstaTrees.zip file, if you're even supposed to uncompress them to copy/install? (TreeMagick has been installed already). I found one forum post asking this question and the only reply was from someone who didn't even own the product, which didn't instill a lot of confidence, and there was no definitive follow-up from the original poster.

I regret any negative tones my very first post on the forums here might convey and would appreciate any help/tips/pointers you might be able to give regarding installation.

My development platform is Windows XP (running as a virtual machine under Parallels 7 on my Mac Pro), while game testing will be done on the XP VM as well as stand-alone Windows XP and Windows 7 PCs.

I have a whole list of tutorials and videos to go through once I start actually working with the products to hopefully keep any further newbie questions to an absolute minimum.

Thanks!

Hi there TomCody. Welcome to the forum! Sorry to hear you've been having trouble with this.

As far as I'm aware, there is no overview guide to doing this I'm afraid. I don't have tree magic so I can't answer your specific question but if you have other issues (as you suggest you have) if you put the problem here, I'll see if I can help. I'm guessing but it seems unlikely that you would have to unzip the files for tree magic if it has already been installed. What type of files are in the zip files?


This isn't unusual here. TGC offers a huge range of development tools and whilst some people (such as yourself) have bought one of their bundles, others like me have collected bits and bobs over time. You can rely on most people here having DarkBASIC Pro, FPSC or AppGameKit but other products are much less universal.


This is my biggest concern for you. I would be interested to know how you have got on running DBP and FPSC on your VM as I've never had much luck with that. I find that most VM software doesn't emulate the graphics card quite right so DirectX doesn't work too well. I've not used Parallels 7 though.


I suspect the confusion comes from the vast range of things you get in these packs. Some are stand alone programs such as DBP, Cartography Shop etc. In general terms, most of these programs will need you to run the installer and then many of them will require that you enter a verification code. You can find these in your TGC account by going to My Account > My Products > Activation Keys. Each bit of software will probably have a different way of activating. Some will request the key during the install. Others will require you go to help or something and click "Activate this Product" or something like that.
You also have some resource packs like DarkMatter. These will probably contain lots of zip files. You can unzip them if you want or keep them zipped, the choice is yours. Basically, they are simply a load of resources that you can use royalty free so whenever you need to use them, you can just copy them in to your project folder.
Further, you have some developer tools like DarkShader that have a stand alone program but that also provide a plugin for DBP. In addition, you have DarkGDK which is a Software Development Kit for VC++ so you'll need VC++ before you can use it (that's free from Microsoft).

Basically, if you're totally new to game development as you suggest you are, then I think the first thing you need to do is work out what exactly you've got. Most likely, you wont need all of it and certainly not all at the beginning so start off by getting the basics installed.

Sorry if this is going over ground you already know but do let me explain what I mean. To develop a game, you will need to use several programs and resources. So to program your game, you'll want to use DarkBASIC Classic, DarkBASIC Professional, DarkGDK or FPSC (I'm looking at DGS here because I can't see the other pack you mean so I don't know exactly what's in it). So you need to set up one of those and to make sure you've done it correctly, try running a hello world program (your tutorials should help here). Once you've done that, I'd just install the other bits as you need them. So for example, once you start building a 3D world, you might decide you want to build a forest so you could install your Tree Magic and Plant Life packs and start using them to make the jungle media you will need. If you decide you want to add a shader to your game, install DarkShader etc.

I hope that has helped clarify a little. Please do post again if you need any further guidance. Hope you have fun with all these new programs.

Thanks Lucas, I appreciate your reply!



Yeah, from reading the forums (lurking) it seems like a pretty good community here, and most of the questions I've had have been solved by searching the forum. Good thing though, because while I am pretty much an instant fan of these applications and am having a lot of fun getting up to speed, there are a number of simple ways that the new user experience could be greatly improved. A couple of examples: a) making the latest full versions available in the account for download instead of relying on patching (especially the manual ones) or in-program upgrades that are required to be run before other plug-ins, etc. can be installed and b) improved documentation, especially installation instructions. I may try and tackle an install guide myself, just to help out others who might have the same issues in the future.



So far so good for design/testing, I've been using Parallels since version 4 and it rocks. I was a VMWare user several years ago when I was using Windows and Linux but never did anything really graphics-intensive on those platforms. Moderately complex levels in FPSC have the frame-rate dropping sub-20 fps, but some tweaks to the VM may improve that, like upping the RAM from the current 1GB limit it's set at. I'm using an older Mac Pro with two 2.66Ghz dual-core Xeon processors and 12GB of RAM.



All the more reason for a document like I requested to exist...



Don't forget clicking "No" about 50 times when asked to install the TGC toolbar, lol.



Found the VC++ 2008 installer on my own (all links on TGC web site went to the 2010 version) and got it installed with the GDK without issue...although the 2010 version seemed to be able to be made to work, most tutorials and forum posts seemed to revolve around the 2008 version so I went with it...



I had two options when getting started: A) Try to install everything up front, so as I progressed the needed applications would be available, or B) install things as they were needed by the tutorials I was viewing as I went along. I elected to go with option A, and without proper documentation this has been problematic. I think even had I gone with option B I still would have run into the same issues, but being more spread out the issues would not have compounded to a less-than-stellar first impression.

My current plan is to go from FPSC->DarkBASIC Pro->VC++/GDK as this seems to me to be a somewhat logical progression in complexity. Thanks to a post elsewhere on these forums, I have also discovered the joy and pain of 3D graphics, so I am simultaneously learning Blender, DAZ Studio, Hexagon, Bryce and Sculptris in addition to the gaming software... it's been a busy couple of weeks to say the least, and I've logged more hours on YouTube than my teenagers lately!