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Work in Progress / Would you buy my plugin?

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DarkPhear
20
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Joined: 15th Oct 2003
Location: Brazil
Posted: 28th Sep 2004 05:41
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Well, I'm currently writing a plugin. Right now it has about 30 new commands, including:

-read/write from INI files

-read/write from windows registry

-advanced string commands including separation, encryption and memblock commands.

-really fast WRAP and RANGE functions made in ASM

-get environment variables

-get local IP

-open/save file box

-a complete replacement of all DBPRO joystick/joypad commands, that uses joystick id as parameter, doesn't require any external DLLs and works for multiple devices.

First I tough I'd use it only in my own programs, but I'm considering releasing it commercially for about 10 dollars. What do you think?

Cleber de Mattos Casali, game programmer.
DarkPhear is a full freeware RPG developed by me. You can download it and some game demos for free at my page: http://darkphear.cjb.net
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David T
Retired Moderator
22
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Joined: 27th Aug 2002
Location: England
Posted: 28th Sep 2004 06:00
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In a word - no.

I think anyting that needs to be purchased should give us something really unique - for example RobK's plugin gives us Win GUIs.

Yours just gives things we could either program round or are very small additions.

Get 15 new commands, all the date / time commands left out of DBPro for free!
DOWNLOAD PLUGINS HERE: http://www.davidtattersall.me.uk/ and select "DarkBasic"
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CattleRustler
Retired Moderator
21
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Joined: 8th Aug 2003
Location: case modding at overclock.net
Posted: 28th Sep 2004 06:18
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there are alot of plugins that do alot of great things and mostly all of them are free. You might wanna explore the other free plugins first before you decide if you are going to charge for yours or not.

good luck


DBP_NETLIB_v1.4.3 DarkTOPIA site coming soon!
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GamzMan
22
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Joined: 26th Aug 2002
Location: M25
Posted: 28th Sep 2004 06:23
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I'm afraid I have to agree with David T, take the new enhancement packs and advanced terrain plus pack for example, commands/features that are worth paying for because they are
Quote: "unique"


Quote: "a complete replacement of all DBPRO joystick/joypad commands"
- I don't mean to sound negative but, why re-write commands when they already do the job?

Sleep...Whats that?
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Ilya
21
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Joined: 10th Aug 2003
Location:
Posted: 28th Sep 2004 06:23
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no.

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DarkPhear
20
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Joined: 15th Oct 2003
Location: Brazil
Posted: 28th Sep 2004 06:33 Edited at: 28th Sep 2004 06:37
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One "small" detail: unless you use an external DLL, DBPRO currently supports only a single joystick.
I guess this DLL will be only for personal use. Sorry.

Cleber de Mattos Casali, game programmer.
DarkPhear is a full freeware RPG developed by me. You can download it and some game demos for free at my page: http://darkphear.cjb.net
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Torrey
20
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Joined: 20th Aug 2004
Location: New Jersey
Posted: 28th Sep 2004 12:39
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It sounded like a bunch of routines you found some place and tossed in to a project for a dll. Somewhere down the line that joystick stuff will have to use a driver, unless you're pretty good at coding and know how to handle the hardware. If that was the case I'd suspect you'd have a better website. Becareful using ASM code with DBP, the way it handles certain things isn't the normal standard, and if you aren't really good at coding in that language more then likely DBP will crash without a message or warning.
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Rknight
21
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Joined: 25th Sep 2003
Location: NJ
Posted: 28th Sep 2004 13:10
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I'd be interested in string commands for memblocks, but not enough to pay for it.
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Torrey
20
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Joined: 20th Aug 2004
Location: New Jersey
Posted: 28th Sep 2004 13:18
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@Rknight:

Check out this link, the last post I put together some string commands with my own version of memblocks.

http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=39094&b=18
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DarkPhear
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Joined: 15th Oct 2003
Location: Brazil
Posted: 28th Sep 2004 13:46
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Great. I was just disapointed, but now I'm really offended.
You're actually calling me a thief? I'm a long-time programmer. I'm new at Windows programming, but I did program in DOS, and even the old MSX computer. Just look for my full name in google, or check my snippets in the ABC archive. Just wait a few days to check out my entry for Retro Remakes Compo 2004, "Retro River Raid". I really don't need to steal code. It took me many months of reading, researching and testing to write it. And I really hate thiefs. You think I can't program because I have an ugly webpage? Please... For your information Mr. Torrey, any 8 year old child can open a web page editing program and create a beautiful page. My time is precious and I just don't want to waste it working on that. It's just not for me.
Windows programs don't have to deal directly with "joystick drivers", anymore, we have DirectInput that can do that for us. Have you ever programmed anything that uses joysticks? Please get some information before criticizing.
About ASM, I appreciate your concern, but I can handle it very well. If you had actually read the content of my page instead of thinking "oh, how ugly is this stupid site" you would notice besides having some games to show, I have made a full game-making library for QBX, with a lot of ASM coding in it. Also, I can test my routines, and if it quits without an error message I know something is wrong.

Just to clarify, my joystick commands handle joystick input much different than DBPRO native commands. Besides supporting multiple devices, there's a JoyScancode(joyid) command that returns an unique code for the currently pressed direction/button, and a JoyState(joyid,code) command that returns non-zero if the button/direction with the given code is pressed. Really useful for remapping input in games. Now imagine a 2-player street fighter clone for example, with both players using joypads. Not possible with DBPROs native commands.

Please lock this post, this post was a mistake, and I didn't post here to be offended. I'll never announce anything here anymore, because this forums are getting more and more unfriendly every day.

Cleber de Mattos Casali, game programmer.
DarkPhear is a full freeware RPG developed by me. You can download it and some game demos for free at my page: http://darkphear.cjb.net
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Torrey
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Joined: 20th Aug 2004
Location: New Jersey
Posted: 28th Sep 2004 14:01 Edited at: 28th Sep 2004 14:43
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Sorry if you found that all offensive. The wife was nagging for at least 2 hours, and after two minutes of that my eyes can go crossed-eyed.

Quote: "I really don't need to steal code. It took me many months of reading, researching and testing to write it."

I know the feeling. Be happy you haven't done any OS development programming before. Each time you have a compile to the kernel, or an important device driver you have to reboot the system. There's been many times I've sat at the computer all day and night reading-researching-testing code. Lately I've been using int 3h to help me debug dll's that I make for DBP.

Quote: "Please... For your information Mr. Torrey, any 8 year old child can open a web page editing program and create a beautiful page. My time is precious and I just don't want to waste it working on that. It's just not for me."

True, you can't judge a book by its cover.

Quote: "Windows programs don't have to deal directly with "joystick drivers", anymore, we have DirectInput that can do that for us."

What I meant was that I doubted you handled the joystick by direct hardware access. It's very low level programming, it's not too hard though. Requires a lot of patience during testing, and you have to send each request to the controller as a byte. I haven't dug too far into DirectInput, but on the face it looks like a handler for device drivers that control the joysticks installed on the PC.

The games on your site look pretty good. It'll be nice to see how you use DarkBASIC to make your new creations.
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DarkPhear
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Joined: 15th Oct 2003
Location: Brazil
Posted: 28th Sep 2004 15:35
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Sorry I got angry Torrey. I think you're a nice guy after all.

Cleber de Mattos Casali, game programmer.
DarkPhear is a full freeware RPG developed by me. You can download it and some game demos for free at my page: http://darkphear.cjb.net
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Scraggle
Moderator
21
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Joined: 10th Jul 2003
Location: Yorkshire
Posted: 28th Sep 2004 15:58
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Quote: "I guess this DLL will be only for personal use. Sorry."


Why?
A lot of people have written DLL's and given thm away to the community for nothing but the knowledge that they are helping people.
So, you have decided not to sell it but why not share your knowledge with the community?
Be a sport ... make your DLL freely available

S.O.S. Site Of Scraggle
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BatVink
Moderator
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Joined: 4th Apr 2003
Location: Gods own County, UK
Posted: 28th Sep 2004 19:07
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I think you'll find a lot of people will appreciate your efforts, even if it's not converted to hard cash. It's also good for the CV.

Why not put a "donate" button on your download page. You may get the odd happy and rich person every once in a while. Although I personally am not in need of this DLL, I always donate to software providers when I find a good freeware product.

BatVink
http://biglaugh.co.uk/catalog AMD 3000+ Barton, 512Mb Ram, 120 Gig Drive space, GeForce 5200 FX 128 Mb, Asus A7N8X Mobo.
Terms & Conditions apply
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Freddix
AGK Developer
22
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Joined: 19th Sep 2002
Location: France
Posted: 28th Sep 2004 20:25
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I think that all must depend on the time used to develop the DLLs

Personnaly, I develop a plugin pack with many DLL in it and I think I will sell it and not give it freely because I use many and many hours to develop this pack.

It will contain for example :
Real Time SkyBox with night/day speed, moon, sun , rain, snow
Support for Billboarding
Support for Highscores
Support For XGui ( custom guis for game development, including chat gui system )
Support For XFont ( simple way to use bitmap font like simple font )
and many others commands that are currently under development...

@DarkPhear : I recommend you that when you'll have some plugin ready, sell the pack . Like TGC did ... and not only 1 dll

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Torrey
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Joined: 20th Aug 2004
Location: New Jersey
Posted: 28th Sep 2004 22:49
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Freddix had a good tip. It's the same thing that I'm currently doing. I have a piece of paper that I sectioned off in to command sets. As I get ideas, or see something on the forums that could work out in to a useful command I write it down for future reference when I'm coding.
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DarkPhear
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Joined: 15th Oct 2003
Location: Brazil
Posted: 29th Sep 2004 00:08 Edited at: 29th Sep 2004 00:30
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Yeah, the joystick thing is the best part, the plugin is still WIP. If you check my posts in this forum you will notice I have been trying to get TGC to fix the joystick commands or to create my own implementation from the beginning. That's because I'm developing a 3-Player game. TCA is one of the few people who helped me a lot. The first solution I've found was GLFW.DLL, what helped TCA create the user control plugin. I have studied his source and a lot MSN to come up with whole new joystick commands, that support multiple devices, have smart device polling, don't drop the frame rate and don't require external DLLs. The above post is just a list of what is working right now. I wanted to sell the whole pack. I think 10 bucks is a very fair price for my effort. Anyway, in the last few years I've released a lot of freeware, helped many programmers and have given a lot of my code for free. I've tried adding paypal donate buttons to my page, but never been given a cent It makes me sad because I know a lot of people have played my RPG, I even got it published in a magazine freeware collection CD. A lot of people have used my QBX code and utilities to develop their applications. I already had both my code and my media stolen without a word in the credits.
I live in a poor country, I have a day job and I study at night because computer programming will not put food on one's plate around here. I really can't afford working for free, I really need some extra cash. That's why my decision is not to release it freeware.

Cleber de Mattos Casali, game programmer.
DarkPhear is a full freeware RPG developed by me. You can download it and some game demos for free at my page: http://darkphear.cjb.net
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David T
Retired Moderator
22
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Location: England
Posted: 29th Sep 2004 03:21
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Quote: "Great. I was just disapointed, but now I'm really offended."


Don't be. if you want to foray into the world of selling things you're going to have to learn to accept criticism.
As people have said, charging for something where there's already an alternative or where the advantages of having the plugin are too insignificant isn't really the best idea.

Quote: "You're actually calling me a thief?"


What?

Get 15 new commands, all the date / time commands left out of DBPro for free!
DOWNLOAD PLUGINS HERE: http://www.davidtattersall.me.uk/ and select "DarkBasic"
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Freddix
AGK Developer
22
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Joined: 19th Sep 2002
Location: France
Posted: 29th Sep 2004 04:01
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@DarkPhear : I understand , it's the same for me .. I have a paypal donation on my website and excepted 1 3DMapEditor registered user that was really happy with the software and that make me a donation ... no one else ... I know that some people uses Magic-Windows ( in their software ) for french and english games ... I have people that uses my tutorial for their software and only 1 or 2 person thanks me per mail ...
We are in a world where people don't thanks others ... it's a fact and we have to live with ~ ...
It must not stop us develop and create games and software !

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