DarkBASIC Professional (often abbreviated DBPro) is a BASIC dialect targeted specifically at 2D and 3D game development. It is available from software company The Game Creators and is an offshoot of their original DarkBASIC programming language. Since 2010, it has been available to download free from The Game Creators' website, however a license is required if games made with it are distributed commercially.
DBPro diverges from DarkBASIC in many different ways. DBPro uses DirectX 9c unlike the original DarkBASIC which used DirectX 7. Other additions include better support for networked multiplayer commands, BSP level support, bump, sphere, and light mapping, pixel shader and vertex shaders, commands for physics control, multiple camera viewpoints, better interfaces to external DLLs, advanced sprite commands using Direct3D rendering for hardware acceleration, a particle system, and built-in queue and stack manipulation.
One of the most important changes was that DarkBASIC Pro uses true machine level compilation which allows it to be significantly faster than DarkBASIC, which created executables by appending a program's source code to a copy of the interpreter. Another notable change was the inclusion of a new IDE with builtin syntax highlighting, debugger, and project resource management. DBPro also allows access to existing or user created DLLs written in any other language. This feature can be used to expand its command set or access system resources and hardware otherwise not supported by default.
The latest version is version 7.61 (1.0761), which was released on 1st June 2011. An unofficial DBPro convention has been held in Chichester, England every year since 2003. The First official Game Creators Convention was held on October, 2007 with most of the staff of The Game Creators attending.
Read more about DarkBASIC Professional: License, Dark GDK and Dark GDK .NET, Addon Packs, Integrated Design Environments, Precompilers
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