Sorry your browser is not supported!

So... I have had a few questions for a while, and I thought I would lump them together in this. Hope it's not too much to read and that it is okay with the mods to put multiple questions in one thread.

1. I have noticed that when darkBasic loads, it flashes a 'module installed' app. I found this app, ran it, and discovered that 'Advanced Physics' is listed. Now, I know this can't be 'DarkPhysics'... But what is it? I have looked through the help file, and searched the forum for this, but did not find an answer. Are there Advanced Physics in DBP? Also, while on the subject: Is DarkPhysics a good grab? Pretty flexible? Dependable? Easy on resources?

2. I have tried and tried and tried to get bone animations to work using 3ds Max. I have tried Panda, and another plug-in that doesn't work in Max8. I know that there was an app (can't remember the name) that was distributed as freeware not long ago that I found browsing the forums (I used it some and got a cylinder to move with bones in DBP but lost it in a format on my laptop), but I can't find it anymore... Any ideas on the name or where i can find it?

3. I have a WIP right now and I have been using code similar to this to load a sound multiple times:

EDIT: (not sure why the (code stuff didn't work...): TIDE


If I position a sound, only the first one is a decent volume (although, it sounds hollow...) and the rest, are muffled and hard to understand when they are played. If I don't position any sounds, they play fine. Is there a reason? Or am I doing something wrong? Should I have multiple filenames with the same sound? Not sure.

4. Drop Shadows... I am having a difficult time making a decent looking shadow using a plane. I would like for the shadow to not stick out onto nothing when the player is standing on the edge of a platform or on the top corner of a pointed, sloped surface. Would it be reasonable to make about 100 reeeeally thin planes like:



and have each one do a collision check as it is dropping from the player? My WIP is a 2.5d game, so I think a shadow is necessary to help the player understand their position when jumping and navigating the world. But I also don't want uber resources taken just for a shadow. I already lose about 5-10 fps when moving on slopes(trying to fix this...) so I don't want to lose more from something that could be fixed easier. Any solutions?

5. I am about 850 lines in and have my particles, jumping, sliding, moving, and other physics functions that I will be #including in another .dba. I am thinking about scrapping and starting over since I have found easier/quicker/more efficient ways of coding things that I have in it now. I am using a sphere as a place holder for the player until I solve the bone issues. What I've got so far:




Thanks in advance for any help!

1) There is some sort of physics that is furthermore included for free. I don't recall its name, but I'm rather sure it wasn't "advanced physics". It probably is the same thing though. I don't know about DarkPhysics, but judging by what others say, it is probably rather good. I believe you had to pay Nvidia a rather large sum for a license if you are going to use it in a commercial project though.

2) Yes, exporting properly animated and textured models seems to be a pain from most large programs (on my part, it won't work with Cinema 4D). The program you are looking for is probably the old DBC app that simply enough uses the command 3ds2x 3dsFileToImport, xFileToExport (I'm not entirely sure it is called that, seeing as it begins with a digit, but I think so).
If you don't have DBC / don't want to do it yourself, the program you are looking for is [href=https://forumfiles.thegamecreators.com/download/524989]DBConv[/url].

3) "if ... then" only works on whatever follows on the line after 'then'.
So, to actually use conditional blocks, you would use this syntax instead:

About positioning the sound, try setting it's z-position to that of the (main) camera instead of zero, in case your camera isn't statically positioned there.

4: It would work, I guess.
I would reccommend either doing it in the old style and simply enough have a plain (textured with a round shadow) positioned under the player (or any other moving objects you feel need a shadow), or look into shaders for this sort of thing.

5) Sorry, couldn't find any question in that.
The screens are looking pretty good though.
Including source files is better done through the editor, as that will let you view and edit it on the fly instead of having to open it up in another editor instance.

You did when it first came out, but the licence is now free. ^_^

Aha! http://www.insanesoftware.de/ is the free 3d model animator. I don't think it will import skeletons nor animations, but it does allow for creation of bones and keyframing them.

i forgot about the 'THEN'. I typed up the code at work. The actual "EDIT: (not sure why the (code stuff didn't work...): TIDE" was because when I posted, it didn't make code blocks in the post. it just printed the [.code] statements, so I had to edit them for some reason.

I will test out the Z position on the sounds and see what I come up with. Since all the game object Z pos are 0, I just thought that the z pos of the sound should match. But this may be a good fix. I may need to divide the x and y pos so that it is not super one sided. I still like a little sound out of both speakers even if it is far to the left or right of the player. I will keep playing around with this...

The multiple planes did not look good and ran kind of slow. On slopes, there were gaps when the angle changed, and i don't want to scale each object to fill this in. I will probably go with the normal single shadow plane. Or maybe even have a reason in-game to constantly check heights and have a glowing line birthing from the bottom of the player at all times to show distance to the ground.

And I went ahead and bought darkPhysics. It looks cool, and after the weekend I will have fun with it. Yeah, when purchasing, it said commercial use was free now. "Advanced Physics (PC) (valid certificate)" is what the plugin is called in the TGCCertificate app.

Thanks for the replies!