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I have some questions about the DarkSDK being sold.

1. Can we just use the SDK to render objects to the screen, and do we have access to the objects world transforms and triangle indexes if we want to use our own physics engine?

2. Does the SDK allow seemless access to the Win32 SDK from within our programs?

3. How are terrains handled are they tiling or just one terrain, and if so, as stated above do we have access to the triangle strips that make up the terrain for manipulation and inclusion within a physics engine?

4. Is there classes or calls from within DB that support a game based UI? Or do we need to write our own UI classes?

Basically I want to know if the SDK provides a way or function that I can get the triangle data from either the terrain, BSP, or model. So basically if I can get the vertex array and face list from the terrain and models, I would be all set. I just found it really complex to retrieve these basic building blocks of graphic display from other SDKs I have tried in the past. My current hobby game will consist of a Terrain and a model on that terrain.

I just want to know how powerful the underlying UI is and are we able to easily replace functions using the SDK with our own custom brewed functions, or third party functionality.

TIA

You can do whatever DBPro does - and that can render objects to the screen. You can access their vertex data by using memblocks IIRC, but that's a bit of a long way round. There are some plugins for DBPro that let you access raw vertex data without memblocks - I don't know whether you cna use it with DarkSDK.



Whatever you can do within normal VIsual C++. DarkSDK is just a collection of functions for c++.



You can use matrices, which are tiled and you can adjust each tile height, or heightmap based terrains which are nicer - but you have to manipulate a greyscale heightmap image then recreate the terrain to adjust that in real time (ie no access to height data).



You'll have to write you own. Really easy though - just load a few sprites

It isn't a complete game sdk as such like Torque which has its own UI etc, that's all left down to the programmer. DarkSDK is a simple, easy way to build anything you want *from scratch*, there's nothing fixed about it.

So far looking good. I don't know how the current memblock functionality works so I can draw a correlation on that one. Any example code included for UI functionality? I never have done my own, but I'm interested in this SDK for the full ability to generate some sort of "demos" as that would still be interesting.

If anyone has anymore to post on the subject I'm eager to hear them. I have Torque but this is one of those SDKs I mentioned where its hard to access the triangle data and indices without having to rewrote large chunk of code, or know what's going without follwing the code execution path from start to end.

I was hoping there was an "edit" function I hope that you don't knock me down for a double post. So is heightmap generated terrain built into DarkSDK? I just read around in the forums that it supports matrices, but I would like to generate terrain with a heightmap.

Also are full skeletons supported in the SDK? For example, if I want to do IK work or do "ragdoll" physics are the skeletons for the models in there or is everything to do with model keyframe based animations?

Try having a look in the code base for any memblock snippets, that's in DBPro ode. To convert just add "db" before each function name and you have DarkSDK equivalents



Torque is completely different to this. With this, you start with a clean slate and build up things how you want. Torque contains fullly prewritten routines for several features instead.



There is Bottom left of your post.



I'm not sure if the Advanced terrain pack is converted, I think I heard somebody say there is (its best ask mike - [email protected]) if it is then you get some pretty amazing heightmap based terrain



I think DBPro supports boned animations. I'm not an expert in that field though so I can't give you a definitive answer

In DBPro ragdoll is easy with walaber's Newton physics wrapper DLL - in DarkSDK you may just be able to use the Newton Game Dynamics DLL straight off. Have a look in the Program Announcements forum and ask

Thanks! I was hoping to purchase the SDK last night but didn't get a response to the terrain question I had. I guess its our timezone difference.

@David T Thanks for all the help. Here's a suggestion make the documents and sample code available to people who are interested in the engine to see what it actually has. If the docs, and some tuts were available I would have probably gone through them first. Or, they are available and I just can't find them. Just like I couldn't find the 'Edit' button 8-0