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Work in Progress / XScape

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APEXnow
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Posted: 29th Oct 2004 11:33 Edited at: 1st Nov 2004 03:03
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Over the past few months, I’ve began an ambitious project for creating a customizable scripting system that surpasses my original Thrust engine that I eventually decided to terminate. The reason for terminating Thrust was that although the idea was sound, it was too slow!!

I’ve taken the idea and recreated it from the ground up, with vast improvements in every respect. This people is my baby, and I’m proud of it! I’d like to introduce you to XScape!

XScape is a scripting engine that is built right ontop of DarkBASIC Professional. It has a fast script processor which is fully customizable via (plugin – XSP files), which are essentially customized DLLs that link to the main engine at runtime.

Any function or command can be added to the scripting engine, as well as user or system defined types with public methods. Now, the general idea behind my efforts is that I wanted to be able to create game concepts and ideas easily and quickly, but taking advantage of Cartography Shop’s entity and mapping capability. If you’re not aware, I created the CSM map importer for DarkBASIC Professional, which is available from my site. Now I didn’t just do this for the hell of it. I needed it specifically for interfacing with XScape which is presented here as a Demonstration. The end product will be much more advanced and poweful, and customizable via Dev-C++ or any DLL buildable language.

[EDITED]
[b]Download the demo from here – http://www.apexnow.co.uk/files/xscape_v1-0-1.zip

Due to lacking other machines for testing, please be detailed if you experience any problems getting the demo to run. Your patients and feedback is very much appreciated. If you've already downloaded the previous version, please remove these files completely before unzipping this file[/b]

Please take into consideration that although it won’t show much when executed, a lot of hard work and thought has gone into XScape, but this is a taster of what is to come.

Please feel free to comment etc, and look over the script file and images.

Paul.








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APEXnow
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Posted: 29th Oct 2004 12:18
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Darn it, if you have problems running it and you end up with a Crash.txt file, please let me know. If it still runs and you STILL end up with a crash.txt file, let me know. A strange bug has crept in before releasing the demo that has caught me out since it runs fine on my machine. Sorry about that!

Paul.


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APEXnow
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Posted: 29th Oct 2004 13:01
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Ok, the problem may be this, although I thought that the code was removed. If you have the Nuclear Glory DLL v2.03, copy this DLL into the XScape.EXE folder and re-run the demo. Hopefully this will resolve any crash.txt files.

Paul.


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Lost in Thought
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Posted: 29th Oct 2004 14:37
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Still crashes after copying the 2.03 dll


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APEXnow
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Posted: 29th Oct 2004 15:37
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Just marvalous!! This has got me stumpped!


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Lost in Thought
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Posted: 29th Oct 2004 16:25 Edited at: 29th Oct 2004 16:28
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I even copied the 2.03 .dba include as well. Still no dice

[edit] Its been a while since I ran mine but it that MS Visual c++ in those shots? If so ... how did you get it running on win2K? I finally gave up and installed XP. I never did get it working properly with Win2K.

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APEXnow
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Posted: 29th Oct 2004 16:28
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[EDITED]
[b]Download the demo from here – http://www.apexnow.co.uk/files/xscape_scripting_system_demo.zip

Due to lacking other machinea for testing, please be detailed if you experience any problems getting the demo to run. Your patients and feedback is very much appreciated. If you've already downloaded the previous version, please remove these files completely before unzipping this file[/b]

Lost In Thought, give this a whirl, I've done a complete rebuild of everything and move the files to a different location before testing. If this fails, I'm dead!


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Lost in Thought
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Posted: 29th Oct 2004 16:33 Edited at: 29th Oct 2004 16:35
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Still no dice but the xscape dll is missing in that version.
[edit] If I copy the xscape dll there it still crashes with the same error.

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APEXnow
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Posted: 29th Oct 2004 16:36
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So what you're saying is with the new version, (XScape.dll is embedded in the exe), it still crashes?


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Lost in Thought
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Posted: 29th Oct 2004 16:38
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Yes.

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APEXnow
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Posted: 29th Oct 2004 16:42
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L.I.T. So it still generates a crash.txt file, what's in the file?

Paul.


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Lost in Thought
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Posted: 29th Oct 2004 16:46
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The exact same thing but the new folder that I made it in.


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APEXnow
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Posted: 29th Oct 2004 16:47
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This is crazy, there's no dependencies for the files other than themselves. Does your GPU support 800x600x16 Full Screen exclusive? I can't think of any other reason why this works just fine without failure on my machine.

Paul.


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Lost in Thought
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Posted: 29th Oct 2004 16:50 Edited at: 29th Oct 2004 16:53
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Yes. This code runs fine with setting it to 800 x 600 x 16 Full Scrren Exclusive in the project manager.


[edit] This also works using the default settings in the IDE


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APEXnow
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Posted: 29th Oct 2004 16:52
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Right well, the only other possibility is that my version of MSVCRT.dll is somehow different to yours or other people's. Besides Kernel32, this is the only other dependecy that the system uses.

I'm gonna have to work something out. Thanks man

Paul.


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Lost in Thought
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Posted: 29th Oct 2004 16:53 Edited at: 29th Oct 2004 16:59
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Oh well good luck. Bed time I guess.

[edit] Did a search and I have 12 files with that name (MSVCRT.dll) in various folders on my c drive. What are you using it for?

[edit2] strings comparing and math?

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APEXnow
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Posted: 29th Oct 2004 17:10
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L.I.T, or anybody who has the same problem, can you please try this for me.

Edit the appmain.xss script file in the Scripts folder, do a search for the three lines that contain an instance of: g_oImage

Place a REM in front of each line to remove any use of the image object and rerun the demo. Please tell me if it still fails. Thanks

Paul.


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PowerSoft
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Posted: 29th Oct 2004 17:18
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This looks fantastic...


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Lost in Thought
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Posted: 29th Oct 2004 17:38
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Same error.

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APEXnow
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Posted: 29th Oct 2004 17:41
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Well guys, I'm stumpped!


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Kohaku
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Posted: 29th Oct 2004 19:17
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Works here

You are not alone.
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Oliver
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Posted: 30th Oct 2004 00:09
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...and here
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Mussi
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Posted: 30th Oct 2004 00:39
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I get an error too, changing the script thingie also doesn't work.



Specs: AMD Athlon 1800+, 256 DDRRam 266mhz, 80GB HD 7200rmp U133, Geforce4 Ti4400 128mb
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teh game wiz
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Posted: 30th Oct 2004 01:26
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when i ran it.. it paused for a few secs then quited.. with this



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APEXnow
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Posted: 30th Oct 2004 01:53
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Mike and myself are trying to figure out what the dependency is, but at the moment, is a mystery.


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Lost in Thought
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Posted: 30th Oct 2004 03:35
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Can all who have tried it post their system specs? It may help to see why it works on some and not on others. My specs are in my sig.

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teh game wiz
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Posted: 30th Oct 2004 05:30
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gainward geforce fx 5700
amd athlon barton core 2.5ghz
512mb ram
windows xp
latest nvidia driver and direct x 9.0b(cant upgrade to 9.0c)

thats my crappy computer

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Lost in Thought
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Posted: 30th Oct 2004 05:37
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Is that WinXP, WinXP w/ SP1, or WinXP w/ SP2?

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teh game wiz
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Posted: 30th Oct 2004 05:53
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WinXP w/ SP2

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APEXnow
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Posted: 30th Oct 2004 05:54
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Right folks, thanks to Mike and the debugging version of DBPro, the problem has been isolated. It was a bugger believe me!

A new version is now available, same link but smaller zip file. This should now work. If you still have problems let me know.

Paul.


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APEXnow
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Posted: 30th Oct 2004 10:07
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Can prople let me know if the new update works please, thanks.

Paul.


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Mussi
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Posted: 30th Oct 2004 10:30
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Still not working for me:



I'm runnin XP home with SP2



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APEXnow
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Posted: 30th Oct 2004 10:43 Edited at: 30th Oct 2004 12:08
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Ok, thanks Mussi, and this is the version that's there now on my site?

There could may well be a problem there that seems to rear it's head on certain configurations. It's being investigated.

Paul.


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PowerSoft
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Posted: 30th Oct 2004 17:03
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What was the actual problem Paul?


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Lost in Thought
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Posted: 30th Oct 2004 18:26
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I get the same error as mussi but with this error window.


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APEXnow
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Posted: 30th Oct 2004 20:06 Edited at: 30th Oct 2004 20:36
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Ok, The actual error was caused by a call to CurrentGraphicsCard in that this handles null terminated strings incorrectly. Mike had suggested to use NULL instead. The only reason for this call was for debugging purposes which is ironic considering it took both of us a good while to find the problem since it ran just fine on both mine and Mike's development machine.

Lost In Thought, the error you're getting is caused by the fact that XScape cannot locate or read the ./Scripts/Appmain.xss script file. Did you extract the zip file with paths? Although XScape now looks for APPMAIN.XSS, the error needs to be changed to 'AppMain.xss not found', not 'main.xss not found' This is my fault on the error report text I'm afraid, but it's now changed. Anyway, check that the script file is placed in the correct ./Scripts/ folder. Also ensure that the ./Plugins/ folder contains the map.xsp and timer.xsp files as well. XScape.dll itself is embedded in the .EXE file now so this is not required, it's extracted with all the other DBPro DLLs into your temp directory when XScape is executed.

And last of all, ./Maps/ contains the room.csm file and it's texture folders.

[EDIT] Gonna be away this afternoon, not back till Sunday evening, so any problems won't be resolved until then.


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Lost in Thought
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Posted: 31st Oct 2004 09:16 Edited at: 31st Oct 2004 09:20
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There is no scripts folder in the zip I downloaded. Downloading again to make sure.

[edit] Just downloaded again and the folder is missing. I deleted my folder from the old .zip too. Could you post the contents of the appmain file here and I'll remake one.

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APEXnow
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Posted: 1st Nov 2004 03:15
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L.I.T. Don't know how or why I did this, but the zip file appeared to be missing the ./Plugins and the ./Scripts folder. I've ensured that all files are present in the new link. Download from http://www.apexnow.co.uk/files/xscape_v1-0-1.zip. This should work without incident. Technically, this has now been tested on three separate machines which all seem to work fine. So if you still experience problems, then let me know how you get on.

Thanks for your patients and feedback.

Paul.


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Lost in Thought
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Posted: 1st Nov 2004 04:47
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It works. 99FPS How do you end the program other than alt f4 though?

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APEXnow
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Posted: 1st Nov 2004 05:43 Edited at: 1st Nov 2004 05:45
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Press Enter.

[EDIT] Infact this is determined by the condition in the script file -



Where Value1() returns the key scancode so you can change this to anything you want.

Paul.


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APEXnow
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Posted: 1st Nov 2004 05:48
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Obviously this doesn't show too much at the momement, but my goal was to determine stability on other users machines, and the overall speed of the script processor. The next update will show much more.

Paul.


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Mobiius
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Posted: 1st Nov 2004 06:10
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Works for me. 60Fps.

Not bad, needs collision tho.

1800+ XP - GeforceFX 5600 - 256MbDDR - 60Gb Hdd - XP Pro
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APEXnow
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Posted: 1st Nov 2004 06:19
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Yeah, that's on the way

Paul.


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Lost in Thought
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Posted: 1st Nov 2004 06:32
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Oh i see. I guess it would be a good idea to read the scripts when testing a script program in the future lol.

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Narf The Mouse
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Posted: 18th Dec 2004 05:23
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Finally got around to testing it now (Oops). Works fine, but slows down when approaching the door for some reason.

Cheese!
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APEXnow
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Posted: 20th Dec 2004 18:42
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Thanks Narf, I think the slow down is because of the transparency texture but I'm not really sure. Very odd though. It also be attributed to DB's occlusion function for display of objects.

Glad it works though. There's quite a bit to do on XScape but it's comming along nicely.


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Hamish McHaggis
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Looks pretty nice, looks like a fully developed language to me , rather than an add-on to DBPro. I agree though, the demo is very slow (45 fps) for what it is. I'd usually be getting up to 400fps for that kind of thing. Are the sprites slowing it down at all?

Isn't it? Wasn't it? Marvellous!
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APEXnow
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Posted: 21st Dec 2004 04:48 Edited at: 21st Dec 2004 04:51
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Hamish, most probably as it's just using Paste Image with full transparency. Plus amy textual information that uses the TEXT command slows it down as well. The eventual design philosophy will be that the scripting will be purely event driven for controlling aspects of object behaviour and setup. Like what happens when collision occur, entities are triggered etc.

I ttied to keep the syntax relative to DBPro itself so that people would feel familiar with the scripting straight away.

[EDIT] Over on the DGSDK thread, Mnemonix has developed a similiar idea that uses LUA as the scripting system. This may prove to be competition, in a friendly way of course as it's very good from what I've played with so far. LUA may be faster in terms of execution speed for scripts since my scripting engine was written from scratch.

Paul.


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Narf The Mouse
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Posted: 25th Dec 2004 16:52 Edited at: 25th Dec 2004 16:52
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So, any release date? (Even a primitive one would be nice )

Cheese!
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APEXnow
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Won't be for a little while into the new year as there is still issues with object control via the scripts to sort out, and I'm a little concerned that my product will be classed as an alternative method for development, which is not what the plan is. This scripting system is a way to allow people with C/C++ knowledge to create extra control over their objects in DarkBASIC Professional. And since the release of DGSDK, I now need to make this a viable scripting solution for DGSDK which does not violate the licence of DGSDK. Since the release of DGSDK, this has changed the objective of XScape :/

Paul.


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