SyntaxBomb - Indie Coders

Hello

Has anyone had trouble installing and running the free version of Darkbasic Classic?
I'm not getting it to compile for some reason just getting an error with some gcc file.

Where is it available? I have always been curious to try it.

Quote from: basicgames on February 06, 2023, 17:58:01
Where is it available? I have always been curious to try it.

You'll find DBP at https://github.com/TheGameCreators. There are binaries on the release section.

There's also someones reimplementation of DBP at https://github.com/OpenDarkBASIC/OpenDarkBASIC

Not sure where you'd find the original version of DarkBasic (aka DarkBasic classic).

I tried and it says not a valid win32 application. Same problem I had with BlitzPlus.

They seem to have been broken by the open source modifications.

I get people want to use software on newer computers, but why break compatibility with the systems they were designed for? There should be archives for this stuff.

As far as I recall, Dark Basic Classic (formerly "Dark Basic", renamed to "classic" to distinguish it from Dark Basic Pro) has never been free, and has never gone open source. There was a demo version, that had some limitations (it expired after 30 days, and it added a splash screen to executables).

The link is here https://web.archive.org/web/20060128151014/http://darkbasic.thegamecreators.com/?f=trial (archived link from original site, so it's legal)

Development ceased when Dark Basic Pro came out, and even when Dark Basic pro was made open source, Dark Basic Classic (that had less features) was never released for free. That makes me think it used some code with a restrictive license (or maybe they lost the source code, like it happened to Maplet source?), and the authors maybe were unable to work on it and had to rewrite most of it . Perhaps we'll never know.


By the way, Blitz3D was considered better than Dark Basic: faster, and more versatile. An utility, named dba2bb, allowed to automatically convert a DarkBasic source to Blitz3D (and I suppose it meant Blitz3D could do anything DarkBasic could do, and more). The author of that converter was Simon Harrison, who is also the original author of MiniB3D.

Quote from: angros47 on February 07, 2023, 22:45:11
As far as I recall, Dark Basic Classic (formerly "Dark Basic", renamed to "classic" to distinguish it from Dark Basic Pro) has never been free, and has never gone open source. There was a demo version, that had some limitations (it expired after 30 days, and it added a splash screen to executables).

The link is here https://web.archive.org/web/20060128151014/http://darkbasic.thegamecreators.com/?f=trial (archived link from original site, so it's legal)

Development ceased when Dark Basic Pro came out, and even when Dark Basic pro was made open source, Dark Basic Classic (that had less features) was never released for free. That makes me think it used some code with a restrictive license (or maybe they lost the source code, like it happened to Maplet source?), and the authors maybe were unable to work on it and had to rewrite most of it . Perhaps we'll never know.


By the way, Blitz3D was considered better than Dark Basic: faster, and more versatile. An utility, named dba2bb, allowed to automatically convert a DarkBasic source to Blitz3D (and I suppose it meant Blitz3D could do anything DarkBasic could do, and more). The author of that converter was Simon Harrison, who is also the original author of MiniB3D.

It appears to be open source. This is where I downloaded it
https://www.thegamecreators.com/product/dark-basic-pro-open-source
https://github.com/LeeBamberTGC/Dark-Basic-Pro

Blitz Basic is better in my opinion as well, although for some people DarkBasic might induce enough nostalgia to inspire creativity. Personally, I always found DarkBasic a bit cringe. I remember arguing with some other kid in 10th grade about 14 years ago over whether Blitz Basic or Dar Basic is better. I was rooting for Blitz. We were arguing in the highschool "computer class" where they "teach" Microsoft office shortcuts and useless garbage.

I own copies of the original Darkbasic Classic and Blitz3d and I can safely say that Blitz3d - even without any updates - is a thousand or ten thousand times superior to Darkbasic classic.

Darkbasic Classic is horrible. The same code run twice in the same interpreter on the same machine will run perfectly for a few seconds and then randomly freeze up or crash with no explanation why. It's a horrid mess. Junk.

Heck even a spinning cube will crash half the time.

And the syntax is equally horrid.

Quote from: basicgames on February 07, 2023, 19:38:59
I tried and it says not a valid win32 application. Same problem I had with BlitzPlus.

They seem to have been broken by the open source modifications.

I get people want to use software on newer computers, but why break compatibility with the systems they were designed for? There should be archives for this stuff.

Make sure that the correct Microsoft Visual C++ redistributable run time is installed. You'll probably find DBP needs the 2008 version installed.