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Dark GDK / DGDK.NET is incomplete

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Morcilla
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Posted: 3rd Nov 2006 11:52
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I don't get it.

I'm thinking that since DGDK is not fixed, .NET has the same problems:

1 - It is at DBPro 5.9 level (no sync mask, no latest shadows, no newer commands), but they sell it like if it was 6.2 lol.

2 - Some comands are broken, like ghost object, object size, fog color, sync rate... You can hardly finish any game without all these ones.

Of course we are warned:

Quote: "Use virtually all of the commands and functions found in DarkBASIC Professional"


Lol.

So watch out before you buy a broken product. Once they make the money you'll have to use carbon14 to measure update speed. I paid 170€ february 2005 for DGDK, it is going to be 2 years and I'm still waiting for a working base version.

How do they dare to sell an incomplete product? (again)
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Miguel Melo
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Posted: 3rd Nov 2006 11:56
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To be fair, I wouldn't expect the .Net version to be ahead of the "normal" version... I mean APEX probably doesn't have any more access to binaries than you or I.

So, really, this is a case of "do I want the current DGDK, bugs and all, but running under managed code or not"... in my case, I really like the idea but I'm going to wait for the plain vanilla GDK to be fixed before buying the .Net version (sorry, Paul).

I have vague plans for World Domination
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APEXnow
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Posted: 3rd Nov 2006 12:41
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Miguel Melo is correct in what he says. I can only produce revisions and updates of the .NET toolkit to be inline with when the DGDK codebase is updated. Mike has got myself and a number of other people testing the DGDK libraries to sort out these problems so that both the DGDK and DGDK.NET revisions are uptodate.

Paul.

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adr
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Posted: 3rd Nov 2006 12:42
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Quote: "It is at DBPro 5.9 level"

I certainly hope not. I bought it because, as it says in the blurb, only "Some DarkBASIC Professional commands have been excluded". That terminology leads you to believe they have been intentionnaly left out for some obvious reason, such as add to queue.
I don't think it's fair to say the only difference between 5.9 and 6.2 are "Some DarkBASIC Professional commands".

As soon as I get my copy of DGDK.NET working, I'll be quite grumpy

[center]
game dev ... is like a bouncy castle full of breasts - VanB
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APEXnow
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Posted: 3rd Nov 2006 12:43
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It is based on the 1.6.2 revision of the DGDK (c++) code base.

Paul.

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adr
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Posted: 3rd Nov 2006 12:45 Edited at: 3rd Nov 2006 12:47
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I'm confused ... Morcilla say's it's equivalent to DBPro 5.9 and you're saying it's based on DGDK 1.6.2 ... which is DBPro 6.2? I realise this flurry of posts may sound like I'm pissing on your product - I'm not. I just wanna understand. It's not your fault - it's the questionable phrasing on the DGDK.NET page.

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game dev ... is like a bouncy castle full of breasts - VanB
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APEXnow
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Posted: 3rd Nov 2006 12:49
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Well, I'm afraid I can only vouch for the fact that the toolkit has been built with 1.6.2.

Paul.

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Morcilla
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Posted: 3rd Nov 2006 12:55 Edited at: 3rd Nov 2006 12:56
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What Paul says is correct. But what means DGDK 1.6.2?

You may find it out in Lee Bamber's (TGC Head Developer) words:

Quote: "Please don't look for new commands in this release of the GDK (1.6.2). It is merely to update the libraries to VS2005, fix some key bugs that 1.1.1 broke, clean up the projects and effect a name change."


You can read the whole thread here:

http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=85662&b=22
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jasuk70
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Posted: 3rd Nov 2006 13:03
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With all this negativity, For me this is a positive thing. I've been struggling with DBPro for a while and the game engine I was working on was getting more and more unruly so the enthusiasm for it started to die off. But being able to us VB.net has now given everything a new lease of life. The infrastructure/Language behind DGSDK.net is now an object orientated one. And I can now use the same methods I've been using in the Game toolkit in the game it's self. It’s made my project much easier to handle and given me a much needed boost with enthusiasm to get back into developing it again. Luckily my project will probably not encounter the problems experienced by others as its a lot more simple in it's nature. And I expect there are a lot less workarounds I have to do here than I ever had to do in DBPro. And finally I can debug things 1000% better than I could ever do with DBPro. So for me this is a positive release and I'm grateful for it.

Jas

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"What is this talk of 'release'? Klingons do not'release' software. It escapes leaving a bloody trail of developers and quality assurance people in its wake!"
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adr
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Posted: 3rd Nov 2006 13:13
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Quote: "Please don't look for new commands in this release of the GDK (1.6.2). "


Aahhh - suddenly everything becomes clear. Well... I don't think it's fair to blame Paul on this one. I probably would've bought the .NET kit knowing that it was at 5.9, but the misleading advertising gets my goat.

Where's that Vanner character?

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Morcilla
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Posted: 3rd Nov 2006 13:30
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Nobody blames Paul, he has done such an excellent work that I'm still impressed.
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APEXnow
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Posted: 3rd Nov 2006 13:43
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Enuf already, the ceiling's low enough as it is.

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Lost in Thought
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Posted: 3rd Nov 2006 13:49
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Yeah, by the time I buy it in Feb they will have a new update to the GDK and Paul can update the GDK.net and possibly the csm importer working with it

It is like fate or something

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Miguel Melo
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Posted: 3rd Nov 2006 14:07
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Quote: "by the time I buy it in Feb they will have a new update to the GDK"


This sort of thing is never quite a given when we're talking about the GDK. Although I am _very_ hopeful that with the buzz the .Net version is gathering, the GDK will go up on TGC's priorities, though.

Have you noticed how the GDK recently went almost all the way down in the "Game Development" menu in the main page?

I have vague plans for World Domination
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Lost in Thought
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Posted: 3rd Nov 2006 14:18
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Actually I did notice that LOL (I can laugh because I haven't bought it yet). Seriously though, it will get an update soon. I think it will start being updated better. If nothing else for the reason they will soon be using it to make products. If I were them I would update it and use it to make FPSC v2 and several other handy programs I have in mind. The same as with DBP though, once I get and learn the GDK.net everything I do will be released open source in pieces and the open source FPS engine will be ported over

I am doing the same with Nuclear Fusion and Nuclear Basic as well.

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Morcilla
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Posted: 4th Nov 2006 12:16 Edited at: 4th Nov 2006 12:17
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Quote: "I think it will start being updated better."


You know, I used to think the same about DGDK.

I thought "I'll buy it now and start to develop, by the time I really need the shaders, it will be more than fixed."

There were no shaders for more than a year, and fixing them broke some other important things, so here I am still waiting.

Also, why there is no demo? (Or at least I cannot find it).
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Lost in Thought
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Posted: 4th Nov 2006 13:25
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Yeah, after buying DBP and seeing how long it took to get it updated to it's current status ... I decided to wait until the GDK was at least up to DBP's status before buying. Hence why I allocated Feb for most of my purchases. A little birdie in my head told me it would be there by then

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Morcilla
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Posted: 4th Nov 2006 14:04
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February eh? That would be exactly TWO years since I bought DGDK...

Why then is DGDK.NET available if it won't be useful, let's say, until February? Lol.

And the same, but asked two years ago, for DGDK
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Lost in Thought
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Posted: 4th Nov 2006 14:15
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I think the update will come by the end of December and possibly the first of Dec (though that little bird has lied before *shakes fist at bird* ). I always add a cushion time though. In the programming world, deadlines are always +/- 2 months lol.

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Sephnroth
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Posted: 4th Nov 2006 14:41
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Morcilla, you are complaining about 2 things (dgdk and dgdk.net) when infact the problem is just one thing.

The .net uses the dgdk directly - Apex hasnt rewritten every command in existance Its not his fault about the problems with the dgdk atm. the dgdk.net will always be /exactally/ inline with the dgdk, as soon as they release an update so can Apex really an update for the .net version. I'm sure you're not trying to blame apex for it but remember the .net lib is going to attract a fair few new people who arnt fully aware of all dgdk situations and just a blanket statement of its broken, its usless - to their ears that will blame the creators of it and thats really not very fair. So ease up.

Further more, calling it usless is also false. I'm sorry its been true for you and that you've ended up relying on the few commands that were broken. But this is not the case for alot of people. Both my and my friend local Geoff use the SDK and hes having plenty of fun writing a chuchu rocket game without problems and I have been power using the .net and c++ versions of darkgdk to further the Iro2 project. These are not small things, if the dgdk was truely "usless" then I wouldn't be able to do them. Again, its unfair to drive customers off because you were unlucky.

I did have a problem with shaders. The last update half-fixed them. Now some crash me and some don't. I'm working with that for now - I wanted the fresenel water shader but it explodes my app so for now im using the older, less impressive, pocean.fx that was floating around some time ago. I would rather I didnt have to do any of this and that all commands worked and further more than there were a few commands in existance that dont exist in the dgdk or dbp - but for now what I have is far far from usless.

And speaking of fixing it and complaining its not done fast enough (it wasnt, I agree) there is at least now an opertunity to help it along instead of just complaining on the boards. The news letter told us about the work being done /right now/ to fix it and it asked for beta testers to help track down bugs and test fixes. Did you answer that call? If so, well done - lets work on fixing this thing. If so, and you feel this strongly, why on earth not?

Peace.


DarkSDK/WinAPI Tutorial
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Morcilla
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Posted: 4th Nov 2006 17:36 Edited at: 4th Nov 2006 18:02
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Dear Sephnroth, I agree, DGDK and DGDK.NET are different things, and they share the same problems.

Nobody says that anything is Apex' fault, as I said above:

Quote: "Nobody blames Paul, he has done such an excellent work that I'm still impressed. "


I think that's clear enough. He shouldn't feel ashamed, and we should avoid talking about that, I didn't mention or judge him at all.

DGDK has been useless for me, and I call it useless because nobody releases a serious commercial game nowadays without shaders. I could have released a 'DX7 version' (prior to shaders), but that would have made my product impression very poor. And what about the time I already used to develop them? They were supposed to work. Still I'm glad if DGDK 1.1 was of some use to you.

Well, they fixed shaders (more or less), but we cannot ghost objects, so how do we do then some simple things like flares for firing rifles or some clouds?
I'm sure there will be more people complaining very soon.

And speaking about complaining, that's not the only thing I do.
I was a beta tester aldeady before the newsletter announcement.
I have been helping Mike and TGC as much as I can to fix the current problems, and I'll keep on helping as long as they want.
But I wasn't feeling right helping TGC to sell something with misleading specifications. Now that all of you know about this, I feel much better. I do not wish my last year experiences to anyone. Peace.
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Morcilla
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Posted: 13th Jan 2007 11:58
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By the way, the beta tester job is very easy.

More than 20 bugs/issues reported and last word from Mike was 13th November 2006 - two months ago.

Enough time to do some fixing, I guess.
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APEXnow
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Posted: 13th Jan 2007 15:45
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Morcilla, I've emailed Mike to find out what's going on regarding the DGDK fixes etc, but not heard back yet.

Paul.

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