Quote: "You need to make your mind up and stick to it. Engine or Language? No wonder your point is completely missed. You've said it yourself..."
Yeah unlike my point above, those examples were to show how the core functionality of the ENGINE have been constantly sacrificed in order for people to get something cool; like shaders.
Somehow I don't think that was a difficult point to understand given what was written.
Quote: "I agree, but unfortunately some people have a different view of what a mistake actually is! For example, not including functionality to exclude DirectX in favour of OpenGL isn't a mistake, it's by design. It would be like telling Ford that you should be able to put diesel in an unleaded car."
If you're going to go with the car analogy, then I'll expand this into "modders" terms.
Many people who just drive cars, might like cars like Citroen; because the car is fairly well equipped from the get go... (i.e. Interpreted Language with Built-In Engine) however the car itself isn't exactly an amazing performer. Although generally it can prove fairly reliable, if anything goes wrong because each part is specialised it becomes extremely difficult to fix yourself and you have to take it in to the shop for someone else to do - often costing you a bomb.
On the other hand people who like to tinker prefer to get cars like to go for Ford, Rover or Honda. Each one is also packaged with engines providing different aspects; unfortunately none are *as-stable* out of the box, but are capable of much better performance from the get go.
Now with the Citroen you're stuck with what you have... that good 'ol desiel engine might've been a great choice for the manufacturer cause it saves you money; but it might never provide you with the performance or functionality to drive your car in the way which you'd like to.
With the other manufacturers you have the ability to swap the engines with a little bit of work, even from other manufacturers. Extend their potenical with all sorts of cool toys like nitro or superchargers. Change minor things like tires, bodywork just to improve performance and handling.
Now DarkBASIC Professional seems to want to race against these fully modifiable makers; but the realism is, that the engine is firmly welded to the chassis and is prone to breaking down. Sure over the years they've been able to improve the little things, but the fact that we're still stuck with an automatic gearbox over a manual can really hinder our ability to slide the car and have it perform the same as these other cars. Sure they've added Nitro, Rollcages, etc.. but underneath there are still some fundimental issues that prevent anyone from seriously competing at the same level as those professional makes; even when you're looking at the base models not even the high-end specially tuned models.
TGC as I've said before, have the potencial they just have to build upon a solid design rather than assumming all of their customers are computer illerate and need to have their hand held through each stage of development.
Provide the language, provide the engine... it's not really TGCs job to make sure that people are using it correctly.
Some of us like DBPro because of how it handles over the competition; not everyone is looking to have something that will compete with them at their level from the get-go. It takes the professional years of development to get their products to the quality level they are; perform and look as good as they do. It shouldn't be TGCs job to bridge the whole gap; just provide the resources to allow people to do it easily enough for themselves.
It all still requires work to get to that level.
Intel Core 2 Duo E6400, 512MB DDR2 667MHz, ATi Radeon X1900 XT 256MB PCI-E, Windows Vista Business / XP Professional SP2
