| Author | Message | ||
     Gabor Laufer Rating: N/A |
This message is for anyone who ever had any, even minimal experience programming in BASIC. I have, but never quite improved after the initial exciting years of the 80's (on the early Apple computer) and later on the PCs after QuickBasic. DOS was out, QuickBasic was out, Visual Basic was in, but it was too much learning for too little outcome, so I passed. For many years I didn't write any programs at all. Until now. I was talking to a friend and he mentioned "and by the way, if you want to write games, you better check out DarkBasic". Dark WHAT? Anyway, I followed up on the recommendation just for fun, and what I found was absolutely amazing. The most brilliantly logical and powerful programming language I have ever seen. And why am I mentioning this here? Because it is perfectly compatible with 3d stereoscopic hardware/driver. I have Geforce card, LCD stereoglass, and all demos and examples worked in 3d, right out of the box. So I tested it and literally with a few programming lines I whipped up a 3d rotating globe. This is the entire program: ----------------- make object sphere 3,100,100,100 texture object 3,1 SET OBJECT ROTATION ZYX 3 while inkey$()="" y=y+3 position object 3,5,5,5 rotate object 3,0,y,0 wait 50 endwhile ------------------------- I nearly "fainted" I was so much surprised. Then I looked into the language, downloaded from their website a few user made programs, and while the games are quite lousy, they work in perfect stereoscopic 3d. Thus anyone is interested in simple BASIC programming and creating 3d programs, this language appears to be perfect for the task. I don't post the website, so nobody thinks this is a salespitch of some sort, look it up on the internet, if interested. Gabor Ps: they do have a downloadable and usable demo, it about 8 meg, quite functional with time and usage number limitations, but plenty to testride the language. | ||
| Anonymous Rating: N/A |
Dark basic has been around for years (along with blitz basic and even the old amos/stos basics) - they are good for getting examples up and running but C++/DirectX or an decent API is still the way forward even for home users. | ||
| Anonymous Rating: N/A |
umm yeah, i compiled that "program" posted above and it doesnt work. YES, i used to DB compile it.. check your syntax. | ||
| Gabor Laufer Rating: N/A |
umm yeah, i compiled that "program" posted above and it doesnt work. YES, i used to DB compile it.. check your syntax. You are absolutely correct, I left out one line, line 2, which loads the picture file name used to "texture object" in line 3. Without that the program still works, but since the sphere is not shaded, it doesn't show that it rotates (:-). Also, in order to test 3d, make sure you compile it Full Screen Exclusive mode. make object sphere 3,100,100,100 load image "filename.jpg",1 texture object 3,1 SET OBJECT ROTATION ZYX 3 while inkey$()="" y=y+3 position object 3,5,5,5 rotate object 3,0,y,0 wait 50 endwhile ------------------------ Dark basic has been around for years (along with blitz basic and even the old amos/stos basics) - they are good for getting examples up and running but C++/DirectX or an decent API is still the way forward even for home users. Well, sure, C++ is better, but for total amateurs it is rather hopeless to learn. I mean, nothing is hopeless of course and everything can be learned, but I am talking about "being realistic". How many amateur 3d games are floating around on the internet, written in C++? Not many. On the DB website they have a bunch, written in DB. Don't get me wrong, lousy games, but not because the language or the format, but because the game design. I already wrote a few "shorties", sort of "finger exercise", and I feel very comfortable with the language. I would dare not to touch C++. Anyway, I just thought I bring it up, since this is a website about 3d, so kind of belongs here. Gabor |
