Question about Basic's - GameCreators Forum

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Mark532011

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Joined: 27th Jun 2016

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Posted: 27th Jun 2016 16:34

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I am a potential customer and curious about theAppGameKit development product.

I am an old-school VB programmer, used to program VB back 15 years ago in the VB4 days https://web.archive.org/web/20040215014903/http://markbutler.8m.com/vb-tutorial.htm and I am thinking of having some fun and getting back into it a bit. Might try my hand at something like a cross-platform version of the old Might and Magic Worlds of Xeen.

My question is around "AGK Basic" and "Dark Basic" - are they different languages? According to a question I posted to the helpline, AppGameKit is bundled with the AppGameKit. Yet many of the threads I see on the forum discuss Dark Basic coding, do people use Dark Basic to program for the AppGameKit instead of or in addition to AppGameKit? Is there a set of strengths that would make one better than the other for various types of game creation?

Mark

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BatVink

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Joined: 4th Apr 2003

Location: Gods own County, UK

Posted: 27th Jun 2016 17:36

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Welcome

The timeline is:

1999 (ish) - DarkBASIC Classic released (DBC)
2002 (ish) - DarkBASIC Professional released (DBPro)
2011 - AppGameKit (also known as AppGameKit) released (AGK)

DBC and DBPro are essentially the same language. DBPro is technically better, and was vastly improved over the years. They are both PC-only, based on DirectX

AGK is the new member of the family, and the biggest difference is that it is cross-platform (PC, Mac, iOS, Android, Blackberry, Linux, Raspberry Pi).
When moving to AppGameKit, they asked for the preferred syntax for the new language. A lot of the commands are essentially the same as DBC and DBPro, but syntactically nicer to work with.
Because AppGameKit is the baby of the family, it is not as comprehensive with the commands...yet. 3D still has some way to go to. But TGC's approach is to keep adding to the commandset over time. There tends to be a functional release every 3 months or so.
AGK Basic is a procedural language like ordinary BASIC, but with a larger set of commands specific to graphics, 3D, audio etc.

My journey started by writing a prototype in Visual Basic 5 in 2003. Then I went through DBC, DBPro and finally AGK. You can skip the DBs and go straight to AppGameKit

You also have the option of using C++, you get both when you buy AGK.

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Mark532011

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Posted: 28th Jun 2016 16:31

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Thanks for the information!
Looks like AppGameKit is the way to go and since it is bundled that makes it easy.
Mark

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Jeff Miller

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Location: New Jersey, USA

Posted: 28th Jun 2016 21:25

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Hi Old Timer,
AGK Basic is much more like old forms of DOS Basic languages ( MS-Basic, SuperBasic, PowerBasic, etc.) than VB. AppGameKit Basic has very little in the way of pre-programmed "controls" with a list of properties, and it is not "event driven" in the sense of VB. You program your own controls and write your own event capture routines. When transitioning, please be advised that AppGameKit Basic (and its predecessors DarkBasic and DBPro) regard TRUE as +1, whereas VB, including current VBA as used in Access,, regard it as -1. Also, there is virtually no control of printer devices that you would be accustomed to in VB. On the plus side, VB (through VB6) had squat for 3D, and AppGameKit has enough 3D commands to allow you to do things ;you could not possibly do in VB6. Also, while there are somewhat less data types in AppGameKit, you can make User Defined Types, and these have great programming advantages. I switched about 11 years ago to the TGC versions of Basic, and at this point the only thing I still really miss from VB is the printer controls. However, that is because I seldom make games. I make about everything but. The focus of the TGC languages is game making, so printed output, like you would want with a drawing or CADCAM program, is way on the back burner.

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Mark532011

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Posted: 29th Jun 2016 18:39

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Thanks for the info, sounds like this is going to be fun! I am looking forward to learning the new capabilities and seeing if I can actually makes something useful.
Mark

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