Sorry your browser is not supported!

Hey, wonder if any1 can help me please?

I've been using the original Dark Basic with the Dark Matter enhancements since the start, and have been very happy with it. I have been busy creating games with it along side Milkshape3d, which is also v cool. However a few limitations of DB1 niggled me, namely:

*No real-time shadows, reflections, toon shading
*No split screen modes / multiple simultaneous cameras
*No support for jpg/mpg/mp3
*Windowed mode resize didn't work
*No Icon change / installer for *.exe

Sooo as soon as I saw the link for DBPro I quite literally exploded into a shower of excited goo! ...ahem

BUT I downloaded the 30-day demo only to find it IMPOSSIBLY buggy (on my machine/Win XP at least) and gave up on the idea, until I saw the commitment to patches the DBS are beavering away with, and I thought "what the hey" and ordered it.

It's just arrived.
I've just patched it, w/V3.
Its bloody brilliant.

However while there seem to be many bugs ironed out, and seemingly all goes well when I start a new project, not a single flippin one of my DB1 programs work in it. I am not using any obsolete commands, I have made sure all the source files are in the right directory for it to find.

So here's my Question...
"Is DBPro, with Patches EVER going to be backwardly compatible to a usable level, (in which case I shall carry on programming them in DB1 til then) OR am I going to have to start them all again from scratch just using the same textures, sound and *.x files (Which would be damned annoying considering their rather large size, but for the new effects I would b JUST about willing to do)?"

PLEASE do not take this as a rant against the DBPro team, I totally appreciate the incredible scale of the project they are working on, and many of the improvements in Pro are staggering. Plus the Manual is great, the new interface rocks, and once all bugs are ironed out, I cannot think of a single feature that needs to be added, its darned near perfect Cheers, Kangaroo2

I don't know... it would depend on the program I guess. I find it totally rediculous that DBP was released in the state it's in, and many of the things DBS promised has either been excluded or is a poor excuse (*cough* BSP convertor *Cough*). Don't get me wrong, I fully appreciate DBS's hard work and effort, probably not enough too. But if it doesn't work, how can you release it?

Anyway, DBP was SUPPOSED to be fully backward compatible, with a source code convertor and everything. Well, instead of a source code converter, we have a supposedly backwards compatible syntax. Unfortunatly, it doesn't work very well, so: Your gonna have to make any changes to it yourself, and if it still doesn't work, your only option is to start over. Sorry man, you just hafta hang in there... everyone hopes the next patch will fix it, but I wouldn't put too much faith in that.

We tried to load the LDIR´s project into DBP, but it was too slow and did unexpected things, so we decided to rewrite it from scratch using only the old routines as base for new ones, which we completly optimized for DBP, now the speed was increased 5-8 times (LDIR works allways with "Dirty tricks to archive this" and anything is now better anch more stable than the old version, and faster too...
So I recommend to optimize your code, and note that some commands behave differently from DB. You also have probaly noticed that it was promised that DBP will have smaller EXE than DB projects, but at moment it is vica versa until more patches come out.

I had the same deal. Nothing I wrote in DB works in Pro. Or if it does it's like 3-5 fps. Hopefully the next patch or so will take care of it.

Thanks for the support guys. I too was shocked by the state of DBPro when I first downloaded the demo, and obviously there are still major flaws to iron out. Its encoraging tho 2 hear of others in the same situation, especially if there is merit and possibility in re-writing old code.

Said it b4 but I'll say it again, I certainly don't regret spending my money to support the project, DBPro is GREAT... just can't w8 4 it to freakin work! lol

I don not think its very likely that you will ever be able to just dump a whole DB1 project into DBPro and have it work fine.

I converted my Breakout 3D game to DBPro and it took about 40 hours (although this was with just patch 1, so much of this was bug work arounds).

Happily in a couple of cases the changes I made were to simplify some code due to the arrival of new commands

Anyway, my point is that it is possible to make DB1 code work in DBPro, make full use of the new debugging facilities and work through it one section at a time and you will get through it.

Having said this I now think that a better approach to getting to know DBPro would have been to start a new project (or re-start an old, incomplete one) as all the new facilities you get with DBPro should result in a far superior result.