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This is going to be a bit longwinded, but please bear with me...

I love videogames of all types. Eventually that love bore a fruit named curiosity. I started by programming my graphing calculator during classes to play little games. Then I decided I'd try my hand at a real programming language: C++. Needless to say it didn't go so well since I never really felt like I was making progress. I had heard about RPGMaker and tried that. Easy enough to create games, but not nearly enough flexibility. Then I tried Gamemaker.

What a wonderful tool it was, it made it simple enough to create any type of game and yet flexible enough to have control over the minutest detail. Only problem was that it was 2D only. This brings us to DarkBasic and it's companions. This software looks interesting enough with an easy to understand interface and decent functions.

So here's my point: I want to be able to program 3D games and applications. I have no real knowledge of programming outside of Java scripting and TI-86 (I assume is a form of basic) programming. I understand the necessary mathematic functions needed to program to some extent. What I'm looking for is software that at first allows me to drag and click to make a game and yet has all the advanced functions I may need so as I go along and learn more, I'm not reduced to working only within a predesigned template. I also need software to model, animate, and textuxe 3D models.

I see so many products on the homepage of Darkbasic and I'm at a loss as to which suit my needs. I'm willing to shell out some cash, but obviously software in the priceranges of 3DSMax is out of my range.

Which programs would make a fairly useful toolset for all that I mentioned without having several redundant programs (I'd imagine that FPSMaker would be unecessary if you buy DarkBasic since you could program an FPS from within DarkBasic). I'm interested in basically having all the neceassary tools to make a variety of 3D games from shooters to adventure or whatever I can think of. I want the ability to program in video cutscenes, add special .dlls like Havoc physics.



To make a long story short I need software for:

- 3D Modeling and animation that includes skeletons, bump mapping, alpha trancparencies, for, haze, coronas, basically all the works for creating dynamic objects and characters.

- Gamemaking/Programming software that will be easy enough to use initially but will allow me to program routines, variables, physics, landscapes, collision detection, GUIs, video cutscenes, and so on as I learn more.

Seriously, thanks in advance for anyone who's had previous experience with DarkBasic and the like willing to help me select which pieces of software available here that I need.

Thank you

Ok,well, from what I understand,you want the basics for game creation. Well,darkbasic pro is the way to go if you have around 80$-89$(not sure what the standing price is). If you don't have that much,go with dbc(not as good).Basicly,for physics,in darkbasic pro,there are some major plug-ins(most are free).Hm...actually,go with darkbasic pro and you can use all of the listed items for the gamemaking/programming. For 3d modeling,I would do this:

There are a few choices for modeling:
Deled
Gmax
(Also look at some of tgcs products for map creations and stuff).

For the rest:
CharacterFX for animations
The Gimp 2.0 for textures
LithUnwrap for unwrapping models for the texturing

Those are what I use,Currently I am going to try and learn blender,or use gmax.

Again with the programming,so far,my game pretty much will incorporate all you have listed. My game will have a gui for setting death limits,and it will have an editor for placing spawnpoints and items,program routines are extremely easy,variables are needed for pretty much everything(at least for me),physics I already stated,landscape and collision go together(there are some plug-ins for those as well,free I might add). For gui,you can go with some darkbasic gui systems(people have made these),or go with a plug-in called BlueGUI(which is extremely good). Video cutscenes can be achieved with waypoints and the camera movement. So,darkbasic pro can pretty much anything you can code. So,its a wondeful program. It has bumpmapping incorporated to it,and in plus you can write your own hlsl shaders in fx composer or something like that,and open them up and apply them to objects. So,If you have any more questions,or I haven't answered you already stated questions logicly,then just tell me.

The important point about DarkBasic is that it is not a drag and drop editor. You mentioned that you wanted a drag and drop editor to begin with, but DarkBasic is not one of these.

I think you sell yourself out too short, to be wanted a drag and drop editor at all, really (though, you may have felt burned by C++). Best thing to do is download the DarkBasicPro demo from the website and give it a go. There are plenty of examples and tutorials.

As for media/graphics generation, there is a sticky post at the top of the 3d board that lists these far better than I could. There are pros and cons to many.

Please though - try the demo, see how you get on with it. Requiring drag and drop will really limit your options.

I agree with what Tinker says, your selling yourself short. Like you I started programming with the TI graphing calculator (Ill admit I used it to cheat on math tests more than game ). I tried to learn C++ for half life modding but I got bored quickly after making so many pay roll calculators. DBP was easy for me to pick up, more so because I have previous programming knowledge but it would be that hard without.

The nice thing about DBP is that you can create a game in a few simple lines. Its not like another language where you spend a year learning every command and then another year to learn the game related commands, I programmed a basic DBP game on the first day. No drag and drop editor is going to have the ammount of customization you want. Better to dive in with DBP then test the waters with hundreds of basic drag and drop editors.

Thank you Benny, Tinkergirl, and Black Mesa for your suggestions. I think what I'll do is download the demo to try and get a feel for it. Perhaps I'll use some preexisting model and textures to start off. Then I think I'll grab some of the software suggested by Benny since they seem to be either free or reasonably low priced. Once again thanks for all your help and I hope that sometimes soon I'll be able to say I've made a demo for my first 3D game!