Wow, this is really good reviews!
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Excellent!!!!, April 12, 2004
Reviewer: jleigh7 (see more about me) from chicago
I am a professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago and I use this for my Game Programming class.
In my 15 years of being in the computer graphics field I have never seen a software package integrate all this high-end graphics capability, into a simple-to-use, yet real programming language that creates compiled code. Not only that, the compiled code can be bundled as an executeable that you can then distribute as a standalone running program. This is an excellent way for budding independent game programmers to get a start. Furthermore the online forum is EXCELLENT. I usually get an answer to my questions within half an hour! There are some real dedicated fans out there!
Things that my graduate students used to take a semester to write for research projects are now accessible with a simple command in this language. For example: Binary Space Partion Trees, Surround Sound, Forced Feed Joystick support, A multitude of camera manipulation capabilities, collision detection, model loading and animation, forward kinematics, toon shading, real time shadows, and the list goes on and on... I've even written code to enable stereoscopic rendering so that I can take the output of a dual-headed graphics card, feed it into 2 DLP projectors with polarizing filters. Now my students can write games in true stereoscopic 3D! I know I am not allowed to post web sites in a review, so if you want more info on how to do something like this do a google on geowall darkbasic.
The interesting thing about providing students with so much capability at their finger tips is that they tend to take it all for granted. My students were complaining that the system had this bug or that bug. The hot-shot students wanted to do the class project in C++ and OpenGL instead. So as an experiment, a few of them took an undergrad research class with me the following semester to try and rewrite the game that they had written in DarkBASIC Pro, in C++ and DirectX. A month later I asked them, "next year, when I teach the class again, should I use DarkBASIC or should I use DirectX and C++?" They all said DarkBASIC was the way to go. New students would be too bogged down on the tiny details to be able to understand the whole game development process in a semester. DarkBASIC Pro frees you to think about developing the graphics, the game play, the sound effects- not waste all your time hunting down pointer errors.
Also a great low cost modeling package to go with this is Milkshape. The DarkBASICPro website recommends 3D Canvas. All my students hated 3D Canvas. It was crashing all the time, had an unintuitive interface and created a kzillion windows registry entries making it impossible to use for multiple login IDs on a single Windows box. There were also frequent version changes where 3D models were no longer compatible. Very annoying.
Awesome!, January 25, 2004
Reviewer: An Amazon.com Customer
In three days of using this program I made. (note: I had never used Dzrk BASIC before)
A 3d pong game
A first person shooter (with
a calculator with buttons (harder than it sounds)
This IDE is great, the language is great, and the community is even better.
-Cyberflame
Easy and fun to learn, powerful, educational., December 14, 2003
Reviewer: Carlos Santiago (see more about me) from Carolina, PR
Look no further for an easier language to learn, DarkBASIC Pro (DBPro) is by far the easiest language in the market today. The language is procedural and not object oriented, it contains many of the "old school" BASIC commands such as DATA, RESTORE, GOTO, GOSUB plus many modern features such as pointers and user-defined data types. This language is even used in introductory programming courses in many educational institutions all over Europe because of its ease of learning.
If you are planning to develop your own games for commercial purposes, it will be good to know that your games will be license and royalty free, and all games can be distributed as .EXE files with no need to have a runtime application.
In terms of power for developing games I can tell you that it is a very strong and fast language. You can witness its power by going through the many demos with source code included on the bundled CD as well as their website darkbasicpro.com.
Creating your programs is very simple using their Windows-based Integrated Development Environment (IDE), this is one of the many differences between this language and its little brother DarkBASIC.
What types of games can you create? mostly anything you can imagine: 3-D games, First Person Shooters (FPS) such as Quake, Unreal Tournament and Half-Life, Role playing games (RPGs), 2-D scrolling games (a la R-Type), Maze Games (Pac-Man), Multi-player, Online games, Educational, your imagination is the limit. There's even a best-selling professional driving simulation program developed in England using DBPro (http://www.thegamecreators.com/?f=dts), so you get the idea on the quality level you can reach using this relatively inexpensive development tool.
DBPro is not drag and drop, let's be very clear, but the language commands are intuitive and easy enough to understand for anyone without exposure to programming. To have an idea, I'll show you a 4 line program that creates a 3-D cube and rotates it on it's Y axis, something that would require hours using other programming languages:
MAKE OBJECT CUBE 1,100
DO
YROTATE OBJECT 1,OBJECT ANGLE Y(1) + 0.1
LOOP
The parameters that follow the commands (e.g. 1,100) are easily understood by simply looking at the context-sensitive HELP menu, summoned with F1 while highlighting the command (In this code example the 1 is the object number assigned to the cube and 100 is the cube size.)
There's a 30-day full-featured downloadable demo version of DBPro on their website. The HELP menu has all the commands available with brief instructions on their purpose. The full version has even working versions of code examples (showcase examples) for every command plus thousands of sample images, maps, sound effects, sprites, etc. to get you started real quick with your own games. I'd recommend downloading this demo to get a good taste of the language and determine if it is for you.
Make sure to download the DBPro patch from their website as soon as you install the CD, to have the latest and greatest release. The DBPatch can not be applied to the demo version though.
The only negative comments I have about this product is their language documentation included in the box. It could be more detailed and extensive. The good thing is that the DBPro community is growing and there are many resources for learning on the Internet. Amazon has a good introductory book on DarkBASIC (with some DBPro on it), ISBN 1592000096, but I think this book still lacks many advanced features since it was written mostly for DarkBASIC. If you are not familiar with 3-D terminology I would recommend to purchase an introductory book in this subject, or do an Internet search for this topic before getting your hands in the 3-D commands of DBPro.
Recommended for game enthusiasts, beginners and to-be professionals.
Great for beginners, October 25, 2003
Reviewer: A software user from NC United States
I have tried other game development systems like 3DGamestudio,Blitzbasic and 3Drad but none of them can touch DBPro. A complete beginner can pick up the software and make a simple game in a day. The package is simple but also includes all the features used in professional games like BSPs and shaders.
Fast Game Design, August 22, 2003
Reviewer: fighting_shadow (see more about me) from Everett, Washington United States
With C++, for new game programmers, the problem usually is debugging and eventually giving up.
With this language, I program so fast I need artists to help. (ok sounds cheesy... I'm skilled in C++ and IBasic already, so this language was a bit tough... why? BECAUSE IT'S IN PLAIN ENGLISH! and I'm not used to languages anyone can read) I learned it in an hour, reading the help file in the demo, while ignoring my programming teacher.
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