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DarkBASIC Professional Discussion / IDEA for a Group Project

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TinTin
18
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Joined: 16th May 2006
Location: BORG Drone Ship - Being Assimilated near Roda Beta (28)
Posted: 28th Oct 2023 20:08
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HI Guy's
Here's an idea you may be interested in...
After several years living a life traveling the world fixing other people's fc< up's, I've returned to DBPro to update an old DBPro application...
Shock!!! DBPro is no longer supported by TGC and has been farmed out free issue along with a few of the old plugin's.
Getting everything up and running wasn't quite as straight forward as implied.! now that it's all free, why hasn't someone made a one-click instal all utility?

I noticed that TGC have posted the original source code to DBPro and some of the plugin authors have done the same, this gave me the Idea...
There are a whole load of clever people on these boards, why hasn't someone addressed the elephant in the room and attempted a complete re-write of the whole DBPro package. (Yeah someone has!)
I'm thinking a community effort implementing all the long list of change requests posted on the forums, changing all MAKE commands to CREATE etc. Unifying the naming conventions across all the functions
for every CREATE there should be a matching DELETE function.
A New Editor that doesn't contain any WEB content (I've lost count how many applications that no longer work properly because they have this implemented!)
Support for pre-processor directives DEBUG, RELEASE etc.
Better OOP styling, Classes and Structures, all the missing stuff that never got put in!

Item as New Terrain(Width, Height, HeighMap )
Item.Scale(X,Y,Z)
Item.Position(X,Y,Z)
Item.Move(X,Y,Z)
Item.Rotate(X,Y,Z)
Item.Delete()

Finaly a whole new help system, with full syntax and usage example of every command!

It's a big Idea, that'll take ages to achieve but the initial coding has all been done already, just needs a bit more polishing.
even making it support DirectX12 or is that taking it to far
DBPro2
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Kevin Picone
22
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Joined: 27th Aug 2002
Location: Australia
Posted: 29th Oct 2023 14:15
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Quote: "Better OOP styling, Classes and Structures, all the missing stuff that never got put in!"


OO was never on the DB / DBPRO agenda

There are however a few pre-processor attempts over the years (Diggesy wrote one) .. But such approach produces a lot of bloat.


Quote: "Finaly a whole new help system, with full syntax and usage example of every command!"


Coming up meaningful examples that capture every command is a huge task.. There's hundreds of commands; probably thousands if you include the extensions.. There's many thousands of man hours in write new examples; let alone writing the copy to describe the in's and out's each command.. Which is very doable with a health community, but DB / DBpro are far from health community. Enthusiasm is one thing, but at the end of the day a lot of expertise is needed to get such projects over the line, let alone maintain them for the freesable future.



Quote: "even making it support DirectX12 or is that taking it to far "


Everything is doable; but such things equires a complete re-write these days


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TinTin
18
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Joined: 16th May 2006
Location: BORG Drone Ship - Being Assimilated near Roda Beta (28)
Posted: 29th Oct 2023 19:06 Edited at: 29th Oct 2023 19:48
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Thanks Kevin

I know,
Quote: "OO was never on the DB / DBPRO agenda"
It was just meant as a suggestion i.e make DBPro more OOP friendly!
I can't see why
Quote: "there are however a few pre-processor attempts over the years (Diggesy wrote one) .. But such approach produces a lot of bloat."
these aren't meant to be part of the compiled code, as they are just extra guidelines for the compiler!

DirectX 12 maybe not as good an idea as I suggested, if you thought the DBPro docs are missing some finesse, Microsoft must have hired the same guy/gal to write the DirectX docs and blind folded him/her before they started.

It is all doable, I can piss as high as a multi-story building, it's easy is your standing on the top to start with

I loved DPPro when it was first released, then life unfortunately took me in another direction, I'm sad that it's no longer active, I'm equally sad that it still has all the same old issues.

Onward and upward, I have another high building to piss off

A Side Question, Kevin you have been here just a few years longer than myself (apologies that I don't remember you) but are any of the old school still around Diggesy, IanM, Green Gandalf, Bat Vink (there is loads more... (Bah) Alzheimer's)

Thanks Again
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Kevin Picone
22
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Joined: 27th Aug 2002
Location: Australia
Posted: 30th Oct 2023 11:53
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Quote: "but are any of the old school still around Diggesy, IanM, Green Gandalf, Bat Vink "


Long long gone... But those dates only really related to how long the public version of this forum has been up. (it wasn't the first)..

If you want the ghosts in the DB machine to reappear you'd have to mention the DBDN (Dark Basic developer network) / RTG (RealGameTools hosted by GuyS ) / LLRTG (Shivan / Blivvy) / original DB forums dating back to 1999 to name a few..

Dudes like VanB would prolly be the longest active, from around the DB V1.06 ( Classic ) release timeline. Most of those guys went onto became moderators here at point time or another.

There was a whole world of activate DarkBASIC creators back then though. Some of it's still on way back machine for the curious; but the content is all mostly lost.. Only a handful of the legacy sites still exist..



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James H
17
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Joined: 21st Apr 2007
Location: St Helens
Posted: 30th Oct 2023 12:33
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Bat Vink is an admin on the Dark Basic Programmers facebook page, occasionally I respond to the odd post there, it's extremely quiet there as well. He popped up out of the blue very recently after I posted in response to a newsletter tutorial that someone was in need of, as it was his tutorial and ofc he did used to be responsible for the newsletters back then.
Win 10 Home 64, Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-10300H, 8GB DDR4, NVidia GeForce GTX 1650 4GB GDDR6
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Mage
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Joined: 3rd Feb 2007
Location: Canada
Posted: 30th Oct 2023 21:06
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I was lurking from about 1999 to 2007 when I was forced to register and ask for help with a shader.

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TinTin
18
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Joined: 16th May 2006
Location: BORG Drone Ship - Being Assimilated near Roda Beta (28)
Posted: 6th Nov 2023 00:41
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Yeah, I Turn my back for just a moment, and it all goes to pot.
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TinTin
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Posted: 6th Nov 2023 18:57
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Unfortunately, Lee and the Guys went down the path of drag & drop software. I bought DBPro as a method to learn Programming it's a shame they dropped it for the other option.
Maybe a forum backed attempt at resurrecting the application will revive their interest in the product, and maybe join in.
I've made so many different applications (not just games!) with DBPro, some were quite impressive (if I do say so myself!) but with TGC lack of support for DBPro, I went to the dark side and Visual Studio took my interest.
A recent request to update a piece of my DBPro software brought me back and I'm really sad to find that DBPro hasn't really progressed or evolved. (very sad!)

Starting with a new advert free IDE that supports pre-compiler options similar to Visual Studio _DEBUG, _RELEASE, x32, x64 etc.
A Separate Help Viewer with a complete list of commands, full syntax and a usage sample.
Class support, static variables the list goes on, DBPro has most of the work done, it just needs tweaked a little (or maybe a lot. )



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SoftMotion3D
AGK Developer
19
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Joined: 24th Aug 2005
Location: Calgary,Alberta
Posted: 6th Nov 2023 23:40
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That would be cool to see DarkBasic resurrected and updated or to get some sort of spin off. Maybe it could be built using something like Unity or Unreal Engine.

I wish i could contribute to the project but know nothing about c++ or sharp other then its more difficult to program then basic.... hehe.
Its funny that i can code the older chips in assembly and new stuff in basic only.

I'd like to start a basic compiler for the sega genesis possibly. I do have all the hardware figured out in assembly other then the cd&32x stuff.
would there be an audience for that?? probably not.... unless it covered other vintage systems also.
Thats pretty much where my head is at .....stuck in the 90's.

I love DarkBasic though.....so id throw some money at any new addition related to it.
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TinTin
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Posted: 9th Nov 2023 23:54
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lol SoftMotion3D
It's not that these languages are hard, finding decent tutorials is a pain!
I'm old school been programming since I got my C64 when they were 1st released.
C, Cobol, Basic (on various platforms) I wouldn't say I'm a programming wizard though. but I'm able to throw together a C++ windows application window from memory purely as a result of trying to learn DirectX9 in C++ (but as Microsoft keet moving the goal posts, So I gave up!)

And as age is taking its toll on my memory, I'm struggling with even the simplest of tasks now (whatever the language)

I love DBPro too, those were the days. never made anything of any significance with it; but had so much fun trying.
Lee has placed the DBPro source code on Git so that would be a good start, I don't think it would be chargeable as it would be a group effort.

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Phaelax
DBPro Master
21
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Joined: 16th Apr 2003
Location: Metropia
Posted: 17th Nov 2023 00:21
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Quote: "If you want the ghosts in the DB machine to reappear you'd have to mention the DBDN (Dark Basic developer network) / RTG (RealGameTools hosted by GuyS ) / LLRTG (Shivan / Blivvy) / original DB forums dating back to 1999 to name a few.."


Did I hear Real Game Tools? Why have you summoned me here?
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Kevin Picone
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Location: Australia
Posted: 17th Nov 2023 13:04 Edited at: 17th Nov 2023 13:05
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For the warm fuzzy memories of course !



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TinTin
18
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Location: BORG Drone Ship - Being Assimilated near Roda Beta (28)
Posted: 18th Nov 2023 19:19
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LOL Kevin

That site is long gone? isn't it?
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Phaelax
DBPro Master
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Location: Metropia
Posted: 20th Nov 2023 16:53
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unfortunately yes. There's very little left in archives anywhere which is a bummer as it would be a useful resource today.
Tiled TMX Importer V.2
XML Parser V.2
Base64 Encoder/Decoder
Purple Token - Free online hi-score database
Legend of Zelda
Pixel-Perfect Collision

"I like offending people, because I think people who get offended should be offended." - Linus Torvalds

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