AppGameKit VS DarkBasic Professional

[lupo4mica37]

I know you guys from DarkBasic Professional. I have been learning how to use DarkBasic Professional and I have been thinking about your newer creation for some time. I am in the phase of testing the demo in conjuction with your tutorials.

In brief, can you summaries the differences between AppGameKit and DarkBasic Pro. What I am interested in is:

Is there is something AppGameKit can do that DarkBasic Pro cannot do other than implementing VR?

I need to make an educational game that will need the player to access all the information in any moment, sort of like a dictionary/encyclopedia that will be part of the interface of the game.

I am aware that AppGameKit is capable of creating such a program/game, but then again so is DarkBasic Pro, right?

Thank you in advance for any feedback. I think you guys did a great job with DarkBasic Professional, it is a very interesting programming language to learn and use.

[thescenecommander]

Hi,

Where to start :).

AppGameKit has a lot of improvements over the original DBP.

Firstly, and way at the top of reasons to move over is compile speed, it's more or less, instant, a few seconds at most, even on large projects. Which compared to DBP, which can be 5-6 minutes.

Secondly, DBP has a broken error reporting system, where the line reported could be 50-100 lines away from the actual error.

AGK is also graphically better, with much better end results, including fast real-time shadows, terrain, etc should you want to include such things.

Also, AGKt is much faster overall, and is cross-platform allowing you to run your finished apps on a wider range of devices.

Lastly, of course AGK is still being developed and improved upon.

I hope that helps.

[lupo4mica37]

Thank you for the reply. It helps a lot. I noticed also, that it is much faster to code in AGK than DBP, as whilst using DBP I was thinking "Why didn't they include an autolist of commands as you type in code" and here you go AGK has that incorporated. It does appear much an improved version of DBP, despite I still love DBP, I think it is a sentimental issue of old.

I have been using the demo with the tutorials and it is very easy to learn and to solve problems. I cannot even understand these kids who give bad reviews to a developer that spent decades making these sort of software to help people become game programmers. They piss me off big time, as they themselves have contributed very little if anything towards the cause and then they complain as though they could have done a better job.

[lupo4mica37]

I want to ask you for some advice.

I want to use AppGameKit for two major projects, one is an educational software and for that the AGK itself is enough, but I also want to make a special VR experience game on the long run.

What I want to know is what other software will I need to make this happen?

I do not need any assets of any kind as I have a team of people that will do the graphics and all sound effects with music.

All I need is the tools to get the job done.

The VR implementation that is a must, right?

What about the Visual Editor, that could be helpful?

The Shaders package?

Also, I could potentially use Game Guru with the loader to design the entire layout of the VR experience and then load it into AGK, correct?

Thank you in advance for your help, it means a lot!

[Amiga Forever]

Visual Editor? That Dead.

IF You want good AGK? Go for somethings like AGK Studio which had everythings and still improving. It got 2D Scene Editor where you can create 2D Game quickly.

[Duke Dudeston]

Even more so now, AGKS supports both the GG Loader and the VR Plugin, so it is possible to create a map in GG and port it to AGKS and have VR in it, however I would also like to point out that GameGuru Max is coming out soon with VR built in, I am not sure what the limitations are as it is still in alpha but it does seem that AGKS, GG and the VR Plugin is what you need to get started.

[lupo4mica37]

Thank you Duke Dudeston. That is what I was thinking to use. Build the entire 3D map in GG and export it to AGK and use the VR plugin to make it into a VR experience. I heard about GG Max and will probably pre-order it next month. The current set up I have with AGK with VR and GG is enough to start experimenting with creating this VR experience/game. First step is to learn how to use it properly before actually doing the real thing.

By the way, do you know whether 3D models animated in Blender can be exported to AGK or GG? Thank you for your help.

[Duke Dudeston]

Originally posted by lupo4mica37:

By the way, do you know whether 3D models animated in Blender can be exported to AGK or GG? Thank you for your help.

For AGK you need to run a command like "loadObjectWithChildren" or something like that for all the animation to be included, I haven't delved into 3D myself, I use GG but I haven't made anything in AGK. So someone else will have to confirm this:

The help file describes:

"Loads an object from a file, currently supported formats are .X .FBX .dae (collada) .3ds .md3 .smd .md5 .lwo .ac .b3d .dae .3d .lws .ms3d .blend .obj and .ago. If the model file contains a bone hierarchy or animation data then this will also be loaded and associated with the object. Note that objects with more than 50 bones may fail to render on some old devices. AGK has a limit of 200 bones. If the model file contains a scene graph containing multiple objects then these will also be loaded and stored in separate objects which can be discovered with GetObjectNumChildren. If you just want to load a single object without any bones, animation, or children then use LoadObject instead. Returns an ID you can use to reference this object in other commands. "

https://www.appgamekit.com/documentation/commands.html

It is AGK2 command list, but AGKS is pretty much the same.

[lupo4mica37]

What is AGKS? What is the difference between AGK2 and AGKS?

[Duke Dudeston]

AGKS = AppGameKit Studio is the new all in one editor that adds more features into AppGameKit..

They are pretty much identical, just the GUI are different and Studio comes with a scene editor (which was paid DLC originally for AGK2 or AGK Classic as it is known as) Studio adds more Quality of Life features.

[lupo4mica37]

Thank you.

[JESSIKA 07]

Yes... but i thought the editor only work for 2d scene, not 3d object and scene? Or was this improved and solved?

[Amiga Forever]

AGK Studio only work for 2D Scene. In the future maybe AGK Studio 2 that will have 3D Editor but that will be 5 years time(like 2025) because it is lots of work to make 3D Editors !

[JESSIKA 07]

what? lol

C'mon Guys! I made a 3d Editors in Dark Basic Classic in less than a month. Not to be rude or insulting here, just saying that you could do anything in Dark Basic Classic.

[lupo4mica37]

You have to look at it from their perspective, meaning that they are busy with many different things. As for DB, I still got DarkBasic Pro, but I have been learning AppGameKit lately and it is a nice transition.

[JESSIKA 07]

Well, I, for one, hope they will continue to improve this AGK for it to become as good as Unreal or Unity for people like me, who cannot program in C, because they actually want to make more than a single game in a single life time... ;)