Okay, okay, okay, this is the second time I’ve switched, please don’t kill me. I picked up Dark GDK.NET, lets be honest, I learned programming through Dark Basic Pro, but I love what C# has to off and Unity3D is an awesome toolset and it was sad to leave Dark Basic Pro behind, so I’ve decided to head to the middle ground and convert my DBP code to Dark GDK.NET, which should be a quicker process than converting DBP code to Unity3D, because Dark GDK.NET is a .NET version of DBP. What will you guys be expecting? What I originally promised, basically, just in Dark GDK.NET. Plus, in using C#, I’ve got the bonus of having XML to code with too, which’ll be useful for handling data.
I’ve also bought a load of models from The Game Creators Store, just as stock media to work with, so I can worry about coding.
You can see here, I’ve already got a scene loaded, the character moves around and you can see on the left are skills, these are just displaying information directly from an XML file – so to add skills, all I need to do is type in my XML document and it’ll reduce compile times nicely.
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Seppuku Arts 
Truly amazing!
I hope to get somewhere like this soon!
I noticed that there is no hardware lights in this scene, are those lights baked into the textures?
Cheers. The level is lightmapped using MapScape, as for hardware lights, the built in shadow shader in DBP/DGDK isn’t very resource friendly – may give EVOLVED’s shaders a go, but I am going to be relying on Lightmapping for scenes to be kind to people’s graphics cards and make room for other shaders.
I bought Silo 2 last weekend (currently on offer for $110) and may go down the route of modelling the scenes in there and lightmapping them using Gile[s], which is a great tool, it’ll either lightmap using the same method as C-Shop or bake straight to texture. Also means I don’t have to deal with Hexagon anymore, Silo is much more user friendly IMO.
Good point, and I am still stuck with 3DWS… 😦
Have you tried Windows 8’s “Troubleshoot Compatibility” feature? It’s how I got MapScape to work on Win 8.
nah, tried everything, might give DEP a try, but its not really that, its a draw issue…
already had DEP enabled… no luck, I really do not want to side load Win7, but frankly, I need to for my video editing software… so, two solid reasons to install it, aside from getting two new pieces of software such as updated video editors for Win8, and the only other option I see for a world builder is 3DSMax… which may take some time to buy… using an educational edition is not an option as I will be distributing demos etc… Do you know another editor similar to 3DWS that does Terrains as well as Objects? [I may get the next Blitzterrains plugin and use MapScape…]
3DS Max is a wee bit on the expensive side. 😛 In Carrara you can build scenes and also create terrains and not only that you can export the heightmaps for those terrains – not sure how good Carrara’s .X exporter is like though, some .X exporters can be a bit funny when trying to load them into DBP. Bryce offers the ability to create terrains and export heightmaps too (and Bryce is free). There is actually a way of making terrains in MapScape too.
Intriguing… I may want to look into Evolveds MapScape and maybe if I can , question him… yeah the X exporting is what had me concerned…
Carrera… if I have a hard time finding it, I may ask you to show me 🙂
I tried Carrara’s .X exporter last night and I couldn’t get it to work with DBP, though if you were to use it, you might need an app to convert .obj to .x, unless I am getting the export settings wrong.
Carrara is made by the same people who made Hexagon, but it’s a full 3D package and I find it’s a lot less buggy than Hexagon. It’s a good toolset, I own Carrara 5 Pro, though the latest is version 8 (which has the .x exporter) but I’ve yet to upgrade. It’s always worth trying the 30-day trial and see if you can get your objects working in DBP (which is what I am trying). The annoying this is, it was working fine with Unity3D. 😉
http://www.daz3d.com/products/carrara/carrara-what-is-carrara
List of features here:
http://www.daz3d.com/products/carrara/carrara-tech-specs/
Carrara was what TrueSpace used to compete against, though TS went free. The two used to be around the same price range. It is a pretty powerful toolset for what you’re paying and I find it’s a lot more user friendly than TS, but it doesn’t have a massive range of support for its exporters. It has .FBX, which some game engines support (like Unity) and before version 8 Pro its .FBX exporter didn’t support animations, which is why I was animating my objects inside of Unity. The .x exporter supports animation, but I’ll let you know if I get it to work with DBP. If I do, chances are I’ll upgrade myself. There’s also Collada.
Also, in regards to terrain in MapScape, screenshot from Evolved’s website:
Okay, I got Direct X objects going from Carrara 8 trial to DBPro, but I’ve not yet tried a skinned one. I’ll try that now.
Object in Carrara;
Export Settings:
Object in DBP
And it works with an animated object too. I think my exports last night must have been done wrong.
In Carrara:
In DBP:
Also, tried importing a more complicated object. This was modelled in Silo3D, imported into 3D Coat and textured in there and then imported in Carrara where I posed the objects ready for DBP.
I may suck in my gut and upgrade. 🙂
WOAH… I will take a closer look at MapScape now… but now I just have to work out a video editor fix ^^ for some reason my LifeCam software will not run in Win8 so I am having a hard time recording from my Webcam at 720p HD