Click for full size cover image

This issue of the newsletter has arrived some 5 days later than usual for a very good reason, we wanted to publish it when the new 5.4 Upgrade for DarkBASIC Professional was finished - and that was today. You'll also notice a new look to the newsletter, nothing too major as we didn't want to increase the byte count too much, but we hope you find the style easier on the eyes and a little bit more interesting.

One of the most important announcements this month is our product development strategy which finally gives you, the customer a clear view of where we are headed in the coming months and what changes you can expect to see for the software you own. This should make interesting reading and hopefully settle any worries that may have been building. There are some great new products too, we now resell the great TreeMagik Pro with both Character Shop and DarkMATTER 3 due out within the next few days - we will send you a product bulletin when they become available.

We've all been working flat-out and we would just like to extend our thanks to those of you who were involved in the online irc chat, the beta testing and all of you who submitted bug reports to our forum. Keep them coming!

New Direction
DBPro 5.4 Released
Bug Week Summary
DBPro Activation Explained
TreeMagik Pro
Twilight IDE 1.0.2
HiJacker: First Contact
FMOD 3.73
VANseam Source Released
Starwraith 4
ExGen 1.13
CS4 Map Import DLL
Lightwave to X
DBPro DLLs from PureBasic
Ragdoll Monkey Bowling
From the Forums
This months winner
Outro

StarWraith 4 Starwraith 4: Reviction
Star Wraith IV: Reviction includes a diverse campaign of 25+ missions, instant action, built-in mission editing and multiplayer.
Ragdoll Monkey Bowling Ragdoll Monkey Bowling
A fun little game created while playing with the Newton Physics DLL in DBPro. Throw the monkey to knock over the bowls.
New Direction

A lot of people have been wanting to know what is happening here at The Game Creators with regard to support for our current software titles, namely DarkBASIC Professional. After many internal and forum-based discussions we are pleased to inform you of the following roadmap with regard to development.

1) Both Lee and Mike, the lead DarkBASIC Professional developers, are to spend an entire week doing nothing but fixing reported bugs and issues with the language. This week has literally just finished and you can read a full summary of BugWeek in an article this issue. The end result of this week is the release of Upgrade 5.4 with hundreds of bug fixes.

2) Following on from 5.4, Mike will now have a large percentage of his working week dedicated to continued fixing and enhancements for DarkBASIC Professional. All beta versions of the upgrades will be 100% available to the public and Mikes worklog can be read on-line on the Developer Network site. Mike will release new betas as often as he wishes, and point-releases of DarkBASIC Professional no more than once per month (i.e. 5.5, 5.6, 5.7, etc). But the release will be sustained and continuous.

3) We will close down DBDN, the DarkBASIC Developers Network, at the end of June. DBDN served its purpose well, but its time has passed and our community is much larger now than it ever was before. All information on DBDN (diaries, galleries, news) will be made available to everyone. You will be able to read Lee and Mikes development diaries every day for free, including old entries going back years. The DBDN downloads will be discontinued.

4) Documentation. A brand new official and comprehensive guide to DarkBASIC Professional is currently being authored. This book will cover every single command in extreme detail. As a side-effect of writing this book, we will be re-writing ALL of the DBPro help files at the same time into a searchable Windows CHM Help file format. Every command will have full parameter listings, return values explained, ranges detailed and a source code example.

5) Forum changes. Due to the popularity of our forum we will be moving it to a new dedicated server in the coming weeks. This should both ease the incredible load on our current server and also speed up forum-use considerably. All existing messages, boards and user accounts will remain full intact.

As our user base continue to expand and the popularity of our products increase, we decided it was time to take these steps outlined above. With such a small company it was very easy for us all to be wrapped up in our work , so much so that often we didn't see out far enough what has happening around and in the community. Hopefully these first few steps will work towards re-addressing that balance of keeping you informed.

For more information visit: Related Forum Thread
DarkBASIC Professional 5.4 Released

Available for immediate download is the full release version of the 5.4 Upgrade for DarkBASIC Professional. 5.4 is a pure bug-fix release and resolves almost 200 reported problems from BSP loading to UDT handling. It is also the first Upgrade to require on-line activation, a quick and painless process that will activate your copy of DarkBASIC Professional, in turn allowing you access to our new Enhancement DLLs which will soon be on sale. It also has a nice side-effect of removing the CD check copy protection of the original, so you no longer need to insert the CD every 500 compilations.

You can read all about the development process of 5.4 in the BugWeek article this issue. You can also read about how to activate a copy on a PC that doesn't have an Internet connection. The download is 11MB in size and is available immediately from our dedicated file server.

Download from: //www.thegamecreators.com/?m=view_product&id=2000&page=upgrades
Bug Week Summary

Internally it was scheduled on all of our calendars as "bug week". A period of time set aside of purely one thing - fixing as many reported issues with DarkBASIC Professional as possible, with constant news updates via the web site, public beta tests and a 5.4 release at the end of the week. Come the end of the week almost 200 confirmed bugs had been squashed. A figure like that is somewhat of a double-edged sword, while on the one hand we're extremely pleased to have got through so many bugs in such a short space of time, it is with equal measure we regret them existing in the first place. 5.4 marks the start of a consistent development period for DarkBASIC Professional. But now over to the head developers to talk about the week that has been:

Lee: "The week has gone quickly and the first thing that strikes me was the number of bugs we managed to get through in such a short period of time. It seems a diet of coffee, twelve hour days, close proximity to five PCs and yet more coffee creates an atmosphere that works well for getting stuff done. True Mike and I have had no life whatsoever these last seven days, and it is not something to do every week, but it really opens my eyes to what can be done if a crunch is required."

"We made sure that all the confirmed bugs were dealt with, and also made sure that all the bugs reported throughout the U5.4 bugweek phase were leapt upon. I do feel something similar could be done in the future to tackle more bugs, or to work on some key area such as collision or multiplayer. If we existed as a large corporation, we could do this sort of thing week in week out, alas we are almost a cottage industry company with limited resources at present. Everything we would like to do must be balanced with everything that we must do. Not a flighty kind of 'must' that comes from the opinion, but a form of serious 'must' that keeps us working here on software instead of the local sweat shop making trainers. Bugweek weighed in about half way on this scale, and quite definately a serious 'must' now that I see the result. We have fixed bugs that go back all the way to 2002, and a good deal from 2003. I must also commend certain users of the community who probably stayed up as long as we did to confirm, reject and verify bugs as the week rolled on. I shall not drop names in fear of missing someone out, but you guys know who you are! Definately a well earned beverage next we meet."

"As always I wait with anticipation over what we have introduced by way of new bugs in U5.4, as even though no new features were added we now have the online component, some functional changes and some code replacements. I invite anyone reading this not to relax their guard and still use the Bug Report forum whenever you discover an injustice that needs to be put right. I dare say it will be cleaned up in the weeks to come as we clear away the rejected and look forward to the inevitable Upgrade 6. In regards to a U6 release date, I will anticipate all emails on the subject with the release date of 'when it is done'. No doubt such a release can be helped along with another bugweek session, though perhaps this time it will be called something more suitable, perhaps 'coolweek'. Thanks once more to those that pitched in over the last seven days, and I hope we have made the community a happier place with the release of U5.4 and the obliteration of over 200 bugs (my guess)."

Now would be a good time to just remind readers that even though bugweek is over and Lee will be moving back onto FPS Creator development, Mike will still be working on DarkBASIC Professional and a large portion of his working week has been allocated to carrying on what has been started here. Over to you Mike...

Mike: "As we approach the final few hours of bug fixing week I've been scouring the bug report forum and it's encouraging to see that the large majority now have the fixed status applied to them. The week spent fixing bugs has proved to be very useful and everyone should start to see the benefit with the final release of 5.4. We started the bug fixing week last Sunday when Lee came to my house sometime after 10pm. We set the computers up and it wasn't long before we were going through the bugs on the bug report forum and from emails we had and splitting things up so we both had our own areas we could work on. Didn't get any bugs fixed on Sunday night but we got the week planned out. Started off fairly early on Monday morning and got straight into bug fixing. First on the list were some text fixes. I ended up getting bogged down in this when I soon realised that I couldn't get things right without making large changes. Ideally I wanted to use GDI but couldn't get that working the same on all systems for some reason. Then I ended up experimenting with different approaches to improve text. I could get some things sorted but then this would affect other areas. Improve speed of rendering and I lose quality, do it the other way round and get good quality text and lose speed. It was frustrating and I couldn't find a suitable way of getting things exactly right using the same commands. Looking back on it I should have left this early on and moved onto other areas. Now I realise that the best solution to this is to add in some extra commands and then we can get both good speed and quality using the texturing system."

"Things improved on Tuesday and I set about working on sprite fixes. There were quite a few things to get sorted with sprites and I had plenty of helpful bug reports to look at with source code. Makes a big difference when you have a small project you can run and see the problem instantly. I can then sort things out much faster. Lots of small things with sprites which weren't too awkward to get fixed. Some animation bugs existed which must have slipped through the net some time back. Didn't take long before I got these sorted. Also some problems with collision, return values and other minor but annoying things. Later on in the day on Tuesday I moved onto the 3D Maths command set. Someone on the forums had reported a problem with this command set and the way it worked and I agreed with them so decided to change it. Basically you could create a vector2 but then call a vector3 command on it. This caused a few annoying problems so I went through the commands and made them safer to use. There were also some bugs in there like copy vector now working. I thought this was an odd one but soon realised what had gone wrong when I looked at the source. Must have been in a trance when writing this command as when I referenced the vectors I used the first parameter both times. Talk about being thick. To compound matters I had done the same dumb thing in some other functions. Last fixes on Tuesday were related to matrix commands. You could shift matrices left and right but when using non square matrices the whole thing would fall down like a pack of cards. Looked at the source and realised my mistake straight away. I had assumed square sizes all the time. One quick change and that one was sorted. If only all bugs were so simple to sort."

"Wednesday was a day of working on many different DLLs. Lots of bug reports on the forums to choose from. Started off with a file DLL problem. The save buffer for strings was too small so changed that one straight away. Then moved onto Q3 BSP and fixed a few simple bugs - things like gamma levels and texture settings. Did some similar things with the Quake 2 DLL which controls Quake 2 levels and Half Life levels. Both are pretty much the same format so I put those into one DLL. Would like to put all BSP formats into one DLL in the future, something for us to think about with our own world format. Later on in the day sorted out problems with particles. Snow and fire particles finally work: There was some daft conflict between them and the Basic 3D DLL which had screwed things up - no longer the case. Then moved onto some bugs with Basic 2D. Needed to change some of the drawing commands and alter some render states to avoid conflicts. Other work done on Wednesday included another fix on sprites, sorted out the problems with several sound commands, changed the way perform checklist for display mode works with the setup DLL, adjusted some code in the input DLL, fixed a crash in the system DLL and more fixes in the matrix DLL. There was a problem with setting the last tile normal so soon had that fixed. And there was a report about matrix up and down needing swapping round so changed those."

"Moving onto Thursday I spent the majority of the day on the BSP DLLs. Some bugs had been reported with Half Life and Quake 3 levels so I looked into these and started testing examples so I could see what was going wrong. I was able to make a lot of changes which will go some way to resolving problems with BSP. I fixed some loading issues with Half Life BSPs so now I'm pretty confident all BSPs will load right now, although if any don't then post a report on the forums with links to media and I'll try and fix it. Also realised with Half Life BSPs was that I was rendering the sky box and there was no need too so I disabled this and you can now put in your own sky box which makes more sense. Other fixes for Half Life were related to collision. Some stupid bugs existed which needed fixing - the collision return functions were reporting crazy values which no longer happens, the threshold values were also being ignored, fog could not be used and there was a problem with automatic BSP and object collision which is now fixed. It was a similar state of affairs with the Quake 3 BSP. Some collision problems with automatic BSP and object collision, some texture settings being incorrect and other things like this. One of the bugs I came across was to do with meshes - I was leaving lighting on and didn't need to do this. Switching lighting off for meshes made them look right and they fit in now instead of standing out so much like they did previous to upgrade 5.4. Other fixes on Thursday were for the system DLL. The memory commands were providing wrong return values. Didn't take long to get these sorted out now and they now return the correct values in mb. Will change this in a future upgrade so you can specify the return amount as bytes, mb or gb. Finished the day around 4 am or so. Not often I'm up till the early hours like that."

"Lots more changes done on Friday. Carried out a few more changes to the Quake 3 BSP DLL which solved some issues. Then fixed a bug with matrices. There was a continue in a loop and when the loop did skip an iteration some important code was jumped over. Changing this fixed the ghosting issue and all seems to be working well in this department. Spent an hour or so on the multiplayer DLL to fix some bugs with that. Also added in some extra functionality so you can get the number of players in a game before actually joining. Makes it a little easier when using multiplayer. Went back to the text DLL and ajusted the code. It's fixed some of the problems but still we have the speed issue when changing size and font. I will come back to this again when we can add in some new commands. Fixed a long standing issue with playing animations. The set volume command would not have any affect at all and it wasn't much use in it's original state. A quick change to the code in this section soon had this sorted out and working. Other changes on Friday involved modifying some of the code in the display DLL. There were some problems with changing the window settings and after running a few example projects I was able to identify the problem and get the code changed. Another change I made was to do with the screen fps command. Calling this command multiple times in a frame would make it seem like the frame rate was much faster. Call it twice and you get double the frame rate. Might make DB Pro look super fast but still needs to be fixed. Added in a few extra lines and now this will produce the correct value each time regardless of how many times the command is called each frame."

"Another late day on Friday. Ended up going to bed at 5am, somewhat of a recurring theme throughout the week :) Got up about mid day today and checked the bug forums to see if there was anything else that needed looking into. There was only a few minor things so got onto these and it wasn't long before they were sorted. I had introduced a problem with the display DLL by making another change so I got that sorted straight away. Also some issues with Basic 2D, input and had to change the demos for particles and 3D maths because the commands had changed slightly. Close to 11:30 pm and we're due to release the final version soon so I best get on. Hopefully now we've fixed the majority of problems with DB Pro : It's certainly been a long week but well worth it."

Lee and Mike are both currently enjoying some serious partying (and tech knowledge gaining) at the NVIDIA Developers Conference at the Ministry of Sound in London. They will be back and updating their diaries / responding to bug reports later this week.

Download from: //www.thegamecreators.com/?m=view_product&id=2000&page=upgrades
DarkBASIC Professional Online Activation Explained

The trial version of DarkBASIC Professional that we released several months ago has had on-line activation built into it for a while now. But with the release of Upgrade 5.4 this system will now be exposed to the vast majority, so we decided to take some time to explain it in detail - and more importantly tell you how to activate a copy of DarkBASIC Professional that is on a PC that might not be connected to the Internet.

Upgrade 5.4 requires what we term "on-line activation". It is a process where the compiler requires a once-off connection to the main TGC certificate server to register your official full version of the software. This process is quick and painless. You will only need to activate the compiler once, and only once again for any new products we may release that plug into the compiler (such as expansion packs).

The process is aided by a set of dialogs to make it effortless. Put simply, when you first run the Upgrade installer it will complete quite normally. It is when you run the DarkBASIC Professional editor (IDE) for the first time thereafter that a window will pop-up requiring you to ACTIVATE and enter two pieces of information: An Order Key and your Email address.

What has happened is that the upgrade has installed a new program called Verify From DBPro CD which you can find from the START menu product group, typically "Start - Programs - The Game Creators". This will scan your original DarkBASIC Professional CD and determine if it is valid or not. If valid a request will be sent to the TGC certificate server to send you an Order Key to the Email Address you entered. Please ensure you don't have any spam blocking / mailblock type system that might prevent this from arriving.

Your Order Key is automatically emailed to you. You use this piece of information to complete your activation of the compiler. Although we call it the "Order Key" you should understand that you will not be charged or have to pay for this. When you enter the order key and activate your software you do not need to worry about compiler counts, CD checks or any other methods of copy protection as the activation replaces all this.

Offline Activation: For those users who have several installations of DBPro on various systems, some of which are not connected to the Internet then we have provided for this situation as well. Activate a copy of DarkBASIC Professional on a machine that has access to the Internet and then copy the contents of the Compiler folder (located inside the product root folder) and use it to over-write any other installations you may have.

We have allowed that these secondary installations do not require any form of Internet connection to work normally. This may seem an open doorway for piracy, but the secondary installation compiler files contain information we can use to trace the original owner of the distributed version, with which we can take steps to prevent further piracy of the language and prevent that user from accessing any future updates / web sites / purchases. We may also change the activation system at any point to attempt to keep one step ahead of the hackers. In this case, we will only ask for another activation step when we release a new upgrade to the language, or when a new product is released.

For more information visit: //www.thegamecreators.com/?m=view_product&id=2000&page=index
TreeMagik Pro on sale

TreeMagik Pro is a complete studio package for creating high-detail, low-poly mesh trees. These trees are ideal for games developers, landscape generators, or anyone needing lush, vivid trees to fill up landscapes... The material is highly optimized and allows for detailed creations using minimal poly counts.

The editor has been specifically designed for 'ease of use', weather you take on a complex tree creation or something simple, you'll always be only a few clicks away from completion.

TreeMagik PRO comes jammed-packed with original nature media, tree trunk bark, tree limbs, tree leaf sections... it's all included! Photo-realistic textures allow anyone to create gorgeous mesh trees in matter of seconds.

We've added so much media to this release; you could easily build thousands of unique tree creations! And with the added support of importing your own media, the possibilities are truly unlimited.

For more information visit: //www.thegamecreators.com/?m=view_product&id=2087
Twilight IDE 1.0.2 for DarkBASIC Professional

Twilight is an alternative IDE for DarkBASIC Professional and the latest version (1.0.2) was released this month. Several fixes have been made including issues with the Code Injector, the Help Browser and other small interface issues.

However it is the enhancements you will want to get this version for including features such as: The progress bar can now display what it is actually doing in the bar itself. Combined the Var Type Function Labels into one window which is tabbed. Added Cascading Window and Tiling Window support. The Find function is now an icon on the menu bar, which has also been revamped. You can press CTRL and 1-9 to create bookmarks in the code, which now display visually, finally the 3D X model viewer zooms and rotates via the mouse buttons.

For more information visit: http://www.eclipsedevelopment.co.uk
Hijacker: First Contact on sale

Hijacker: First Contact is a side scrolling / overhead 3D shooter with a twist: you can take over every enemy ship you encounter by locking on with your tractor beam and "hacking" into their ship systems. Use this and other special abilities as you blast your way through over 50 action-packed levels!

Hijacker took 2nd place in the RGT Competition a while back. The full game has finally been completed and its on sale now! The full game is just $9.95 and there is a free demo version to try out.

For more information visit: http://www.shrikesoftware.com
FMOD SoundSystem Update v3.73

For those of you who use the FMOD SoundSystem DLLs in your projects you may be interested to know that a new version has just been released. 3.73 mainly fixes some minor issues, but also adds some new CD access capabilities along with: Extended ASF/WMA tag support aded, FSBank sound bank generation tool updated, CD enhancements, TOC access, new eject function and cdda support improvements.

FMOD is a DLL capable of playing back just about any type of music file / stream. From old Amiga Soundtracker modules to the latest streamed mp3s. It is free for non-commercial use.

For more information visit: http://www.fmod.org
VANseam Source Code Released

Although it's said to be "mostly uncommented and very awkward" Andrew Vanbeck has released the full source code to his texture tiling program VANseam. This DarkBASIC Professional application allows for texture manipulation and seamless generation and is a good, if less functional free alternative to Texture Maker. With the source code now available you can update the program yourself or enhance it further. Be sure to share your modifications with the community.

Download from: http://files.thegamecreators.com/newsletter/VANseam_source.zip
StarWraith 4: Reviction


Created with DarkBASIC Classic, Starwraith 4 is the latest in a long line of successful commercial games from SW3D Games. There is a free trial version available, or you can buy the full game on-line. Here's the score on this ace sci-fi space sim:

Built in secret and flown in covert missions, the Star Wraith is the Alliance's most powerful weapon. After the elusive starfighters helped end a brutal civil war and restore peace, the Vonari took advantage of humanity's weakened condition and attempted to take Earth. While their efforts failed, the threat they posed became a terrifying reality. The Alliance now finds itself split with rebel forces defecting from the home worlds to unite with the Federation. Their intentions are unknown and Alliance command has established a new division to find out what the rebels are up to. You have been assigned to this new special operations wing, an elite group of the best fighter pilots in known space who have been given the responsibility of flying covert assignments deep inside enemy territory. Your duties will include recon, capture, patrol, escort, and much more. You'll have no support and may also be called upon to mine for resources and explore as you venture into hostile space. It's time to prove if you have the skills necessary to master the most powerful starfighter of the future.

Star Wraith IV: Reviction includes a diverse single player campaign of over 25 missions, random instant action, and built-in mission editing. Multiplayer features dogfight, team-vs-team, capture-the-sphere, and cooperative combat modes allowing up to 8 players to join together to play over the internet or a LAN. Complete rotation and strafe thruster controls enhance the realistic flight model that includes dynamic collision detection and inertial effects. Environments including planets, asteroids, asteroid caves, planetary terrain, nebula clouds, and more are all interactive, not merely backdrops. The advanced graphics engine is further enhanced with cinematic-style special effects and precise detail for captivating gameplay immersion. Skill and combat knowledge means survival in this 3D starfighter simulation that takes space combat to the ultimate level.

  For more details: http://www.starwraith.com
ExGen Updated to v1.13

ExGen, the visual effects generator has been updated to version 1.13. This new version includes better help files, lots more samples and a few essential bug fixes. People who buy ExGen will now also receive source code showing how to use ExGen images and animations in their own games. The code examples provided are in DarkBASIC Professional and Blitz 3D format.

Wrapped in an intuitive interface, the powerful ExGen system allows you to create a wide variety of effects which can then be exported as image/s or an AVI animation file for instant use in your games. Texture objects with an explosion animation, or rising smoke, pulsating lights, lazer beams or anything else you can create.

For more information visit: http://exgen.thegamecreators.com
Cartography Shop 4.x Map Import Plugin

A new DarkBASIC Professional TCP plug-in (WIP) has been released by Paul Millard which allows you to load and manage Cartography Shop map files. The difference between this and the original native code version is speed and usability. The plugin supports three types of loading functionality:

1. Loading maps without lightmaps
2. Loading maps with lightmaps using 2x Mesh Support (same as loading .X and .X LM files)
3. Multi-texturing (although not fully functional in DBP, it'll be resolved soon)
4. CAULK texture detection for removing meshes that are effectively invisible

The plugin comes with full documentation on the usage of each function available. After installation lots of new native DBPro commands will become available including LOAD CSM, CSM TEXTURE IMAGE and more.

Download from: http://www.apexnow.co.uk/csmimport-v3.0.3.zip
Lightwave Exporter to .X

The prolific NuclearGlory Enterprises have released a program for users of the 3D modelling package Lightwave that will convert your entire LW scene into a single optimised X object file. This is a real bonus for any Lightwave users previously struggling to get their content into the X format. It supports multi-layer objects, multiple textures, all UV coordinates are retained correctly, Smooth Baking support, Bone Animation support, Optimised and Compressed output.

This tool costs only $9.95 and is available now. A trial version can also be downloaded.

For more information visit: http://www.nuclearglory.com
Creating DarkBASIC Professional DLLs with Purebasic

Daniel Reed (Akira Tsunami on the forums) has released a tutorial aimed specifically for those of you trying to create DLLs for DarkBASIC Professional using the excellent Purebasic language. Purebasic is a compact and versatile basic language ideal for creating applications / services / DLLs. This tutorial will show you how to use it to build DLLs for DarkBASIC Professional.

Download from: http://files.thegamecreators.com/newsletter/purebasic_dll_in_dbpro_tutorial.zip
Ragdoll Monkey Bowling

Ragdoll Physics are all the rage at the moment. You've probably seen them in action in games such as Far Cry, when you blow away an enemy and they fly across the map limply, slamming into a wall or object and sliding to the ground. As reported in previous newsletters the Newton Physics DLL is being ported to DarkBASIC Professional - and developer Walaber has taken advantage of this to create Ragdoll Monkey Bowling.

In his words it's "just a fun little mini-game I made messing around with ragdolls and other features with Newton. Control the timing and release the monkey at just the right time to knock down the pins!". Although you need a quite meaty PC to run it at any speed, it's still really great fun and features a fully lightmapped level and of course a stuffed monkey animal (and any game with monkies in is cool in our books).

Grab the free download and leave your feedback on the forum thread page.

  Download from: http://walaber.dbstpo.com/ndb/monkeybowling.exe
From the Forums

Our community forums are always an interesting place to be. Here is a short summary of very interesting threads that you may wish to take a look at and perhaps participate in?

A* in DarkBASIC Classic - Mattman has transfered IanM's original A* library from DarkBASIC Professional to DarkBASIC Classic. It can run 4-way and 8-way A* (with or without diagonals restricted) and flood searches. A* is a path-finding solution.
Read more: A* Thread

vanMESH - Not content with releasing the source code for vanSEAM, Andrew Vanbeck has also been showing off new images from his vanMESH program. vanMESH is a promising looking object creation and manipulation program using a clever script engine to handle all of the internal functions.
Read more: vanMESH Thread

Digital Omega Installer - Another entry into the burgeoning install maker area is provided by the author of Level Maker 3D. This installer includes support for Encryption, Uninstalling (well, you'd hope so wouldn't you?!), Directory Macros, Desktop shortcuts, Internet downloading and more. Grab the download and see for yourself.
Read more: Installer Thread

OpenGL in DBPro - Preston Chaderton has started work on a third party plug-in for Dark Basic Professional that will allow programmers to use OpenGL in their applications. "It's working quite well right now, though there is no lighting or texturing yet."
Read more: RGT OpenGL Thread

Car Physics Demo - This is one of the more impressive car demos we have seen recently. Although the screen shots in this forum thread initially look like it's just a matrix editor of some kind, you really must download the demo to get a real appreciation for this. The car flies around the track with great arcade style handling and we can only hope it gets turned into a game of some kind.
Read more: Car Physics Demo Thread

Visit our forums: //www.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum
This months winner

We've plucked one lucky subscriber to our newsletter and for you a completely free copy of DarkBASIC Professional is yours for the asking. The winner is ????@digitaldreams.?????.co.uk - just email us and a free copy of DarkBASIC Professional is yours.

For more information visit: //www.thegamecreators.com/?m=view_product&id=2000&page=index
Outro

I am really pleased with the way this issue has turned out. Ok, so it's quite a mammoth read and there is a lot of text going on - but it's all important stuff that we felt you ought to know about, and you're not going to read most of it anywhere else. This is also the single largest issue ever, even though the contents list might not look like it - because I've started grouping similar articles together like a real magazine does. This is a new style this issue and I will refine it in the coming months, it was tested with Outlook, Outlook Express, GMail (click the "display images" button!), The Bat! and a few other email clients and appeared correctly - so fingers crossed for the rest of you.

Got something you want thousands of people to read about in the next issue? Then get in touch! Email me: rich@thegamecreators.com or use our Feedback form.

Contact us: //www.thegamecreators.com/

Famous Last Words: "I'm sure I saw a scorpion run into this cell, let's search for it!"
(C) Copyright The Game Creators Limited 2004