3d is easy, imagine you are stood inside the DB universe, bang in the middle (position 0 across, 0 up, 0 away), the box in front of you (5 meters away) is 0 across, 0 up, 5 away, DB refers to these positions in the manual as X,Y and Z.
so imagine you are floating in space at x=0,y=0,z=0, the box is at x=0,y=0,z=5, you want to make the box rise 8 meters into the air so that you have to look up to see it, so you make the position for the box x=0,y=8,z=5, now the box is 5 in front and 8 up.
now move it to the right 10 meters just by doing x=10,y=8,z=5, thats all you need to position an object in 3d space, if you want it behind you and you are at 0,0,0, then the distance away will become negative, so to place the box 3 meters behind you, you do x=10,y=8,z=-3 <<< note the minus in front of the three.
by just altering the numbers you can move the box anywhere you like instantly, heres a short snippet, ever time you press the spce key the box will placed at three random positions, some you can`t see since they are behind you, note the autocam off at the start of the code, autocam allways points the camera at the last object created, you realy need to turn it off since it makes matters very confuseing when you first start.
autocam off
sync on:sync rate 0:sync
make object cube 1,1
do
rem these bits of code create random positions in an area
rem 10 wide, 10 high and 10 deep from -5 to +5 each way
x=rnd(10)-5
y=rnd(10)-5
z=rnd(10)-5
position object 1,x,y,z
text 0,0,"X="+str$(x)+" Y="+str$(y)+" Z="+str$(z)
sync
repeat
wait 100:rem simple key debounce
until spacekey()
loop
remember that the camera starts off at position 0,0,0 in DB, if you want it at some other location then you can position it just like the cube, you can also move an object, also notice that if you handle screen refreshes manualy like this code does then you need to do a sync after you have done all the alterations to the scene (normaly at the end of the program loop) or you won`t see any change and the program will appear to be doing nothing, heres the answers to all your questions...
1...I never considered Basic to HAVE a learning curve ??? , imagine you learn a new language, it uses English words and you just need to memorise 300 or so of them to be fluent, thats not so hard, if you are used to logic and compares then you are 9/10ths of the way there
2...TDGM is a point and click games maker, about as much use to anyone who has any imagination as a pair of wellies to a goldfish, sort of Lego with three types of block, DB on the other hand is language, It`s made to create games, but being a language you can also make level editors and music players, text games and utilities, even a wordprocessor or a spreadsheet program (if you feel the world HAS to have another
)
3...DB is LANGUAGE, you describe what you want and the compiler creates the resulting code that may (or may not) do what you expected, imagine working with somebody who does exactly what you say and won`t think for himself, it can be annoying, you say "pass the pliers" and he says "I don`t know what pliers you want" so you say "pass the pin nose pliers" and he says, "do you want them from a shop or the toolbox?", so you say "from the toolbox" and he says "error...unable to pick up pliers/pin-nose with hands...object "hands" in use".....you get the idea
??
4...not hard at all, I can write a game in under 60 seconds, one you would want to keep playing???....well!, thats a different story
5..see above,to program a game that would keep my nephews amused for the afternoon would take about two days, Morrowind would take about two years and I would need some help with the GFX, if you mean how fast is the code (program), you don`t want to think you can load a world and then load 50 animated opponents and expect a framerate over 30 on even the most burly PC, even games like return to castle wolfenstien reduce the load ojn the PC by only loading the opponents you are about to meet, try the cheat mode and "ghost" about the landscape, and you will find that the rest of the level is strangly empty, only the troops you will meet next as you go through the level are actualy there, the rest are loaded as others are deleted (killed) or passed., speed is down to how well you code more than the language.
6...yes! or a game server, or a program to swap files with your mates, you have the full set of directx directplay and ftp commands at your disposal (in Pro that is...I assume you wont buy classic since it is old and much slower than pro as well as lacking a lot of features)
7...get darkmatter, that way you concentrate on learning to code and not trying to learn to model and animate at the same time, by the time you can write code reasonably well you will realise exactly what you will need in the way of extra software and have some idea of what it is worth learning (or not)
8...DarkBasic pro, Classic is ok if you can`t afford the little extra that pro will cost, but if ou get any good at all you will be wanting Pro in a very short time, so you might as well pay the little extra and start off with the more powerfull of the two.
finaly!, there is a reason why they call programs code!, you will have to learn to read and edit your code, over time you will forget what even the most obvious (at the time) bit of code does, so learn to comment your code frequently right from the start, that way you will be able to keep track of what you are doing and also spot ommisions or errors easier when you read the "english" comments, you will find that after a while you get to understand just what is going on in even the big name titles, you will also get the habit of scrutinising the games to see "how they did that" as well as testing the AI to see if you can work out how they did it and just what the weak points are, soon you will be adopting ideas for your own use and helping out newbs, you won`t get rich at this hobby ten to one, but you won`t ever be bored either
Mentor.
System spec : Pentium 3.0Ghz, 512MB DDR, 1x160Gb HD (using 2 overheats
), DVD RW/CD RW (all modes), multimedia front panel, 6 way surround sound, ATI radeon 9800 128mb.
