Now you can take full advantage of the game engine that powers DarkBASIC Professional within a C++ environment with the Dark Game SDK.

A whole new world of possibilities can be opened up by combining the features that C++ offers and the power of the Dark Game SDK. The SDK brings the flexibility of the DarkBASIC Professional engine to the world of C++ development while still retaining the ease of use that DarkBASIC Professional offered.

The Dark Game SDK provides all of the command sets found within DarkBASIC Professional into an easy to use library format that is compatible with Microsoft Visual Studio 6 and Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003. Work is also underway to support Dev C++.

Developing games with the Dark Game SDK offers many benefits:

• Faster program execution. Many examples tested saw FPS rates increased dramatically.
• Much smaller executables. EXE file sizes start from 1.8 MB (1828 KB) with the 3D engine fully invoked.
• Significantly faster compile times and easier debugging (dependant on compiler used)
• Use virtually all of the commands and functions found in DarkBASIC Professional
• Combine all of this with the features that C++ offers such as the chance to use object oriented code, an industry standard syntax, well developed compilers and IDEs.
• All game commands are covered: joystick handling, keyboard input, music, sound and animation as well as the 3D game engine.
• All the benefits of a C++ compiler and language structure / syntax, with the functions and features of DarkBASIC Professional
• A great way to get into C++ development.

Once installed it only takes a few simple steps to be able to use the SDK within your compiler and you can then start developing a C++ program that utilises the features of the SDK.

Here's an example to show just how easy the SDK is to use:

#include "DarkSDK.h"

void DarkSDK ( void )
{
	// set sync on and sync rate to 60 frames per second
	dbSyncOn   ( );
	dbSyncRate ( 60 );

	// make a cube
	dbMakeObjectCube ( 1, 10 );

	// loop until the escape key is pressed
	while ( !dbEscapeKey ( ) )
	{
		// update screen
		dbSync ( );
	}
}

This example places a 3D cube on screen and then loops round until the escape key is pressed using a standard C++ while loop. Many of you will recognise the commands as they are named in a very similar manner to those in DarkBASIC Professional. You'll notice they have a db prefix and no spacing. The commands themselves work in exactly the same way.

A selection of example programs are provided with the Dark Game SDK demonstrating how to take advantage of it's many features. Several brand new demos have been created and others converted from the original Dark Basic Pro to demonstrate the benefits when using the SDK.

Also included with the Dark Game SDK is a comprehensive help file detailing all of the functions available. A useful index and search facility is also provided.

The Dark Game SDK is available now. The freeware version costs $60 (€45 / £32) while the Shareware version costs $200 (€150 / £100). Upgrades from the freeware to the shareware version are available. Existing DarkBASIC Professional owners will receive a 10% discount. Order before the end of 2004 and you will receive a further 10% discount. For full details see the Dark Game SDK web site.

We are pleased to bring all of our newsletter readers this special limited offer: Buy DarkBASIC Professional on-line before the end of November 2004 and receive a 15% discount. This brings the price down from $69.99 to $58.99. There are no limitations with this version, it's the same great product just at a specially discounted rate for newsletter readers. To receive the discount you must follow the link below.

We have just released another 5 new SoundMATTER packs ranging from control panel effects to rain, wind and fire. SoundMATTER is a collection of high-quality and royalty free sound effects for use in your games. Everything from gun shots, explosions and alien deaths to card shuffles, die rolling, swords clashing, food munching and more!

SoundMATTER uses custom programmed audio software to create original sound effects for games. All sounds are 100% original, sampled from the actual sound source or synthesised from original samples or raw waveforms. The end result is deep, vibrant sound effects created specificaly for gaming. There are nine packs available with some great money saving offers on multiple purchases.

The new packs include effects ranging from GUI Interface Controls and Bleeps to Footsteps, Rain, Wind and Fire and more RPG styled effects in the Sword and Sorcery Pack 2.

SoundMATTER Packs cost only $14.95 (€12.95, £8.99) each and are all available now for download.

SFXEngine is sound effects creation software that uses custom programmed D.S.P. technology to create amazing new sounds quickly and easily. SFXEngine is easier and faster to use than music synthesizers, and gives you more power because any parameter can be modulated to any pattern you desire.

SFXEngine is powerful sound creation software for Windows PC's. Using a plug-in based synthesis system, you can use SFXEngine to quickly and easily create any sound or add new audio effects to existing sounds. Like filters in graphics programs, the sound engines in SFXEngine are plug-in files that create or manipulate sound in some way. The 'Sample' engine will play a sample of your choice, and the 'Nitroverb' engine will add reverb. Up to twelve engines are placed in series to make a program.

An update to the .MAP to .CSM converter which is used for porting Valve .MAP files over to Cartography Shop has been released. The converter now outputs v4.1 Cartography Shop map files. You do not need the prefabmaker to upgrade the original versions file output. The download is free and available from the following web site: http://www.apexnow.co.uk

The 2004 Programming Competition is finally over. After many months of hard work you all sent in your games and in the past weeks we have played more Snake variations than probably every Nokia owner in the country combined :) We've eaten apples, hoarded ants, mowed lawns, rescued hostages, been thrashed at football by a red snake, sunk countless boats, bombed more tanks than the Coalition and generally had a blast! But the results are in, the prizes have been allocated and we are pleased to announce the results of the 2004 Programming Competition.

We were pleased to see a total of 76 entries submitted to the competition and there are a great range of games on offer. Perhaps more staggering was the overall size of the competition results, because we had increased the total file size limit people really took advantage of this to cram more music, objects and animations into their games. The net result being a massive 1.81 GB worth of entries! For those of you new to the newsletter who were not aware of the competition here is a quick recap of the rules:

Each game had to follow one of three set game genres: 1) A snake clone. This was the easy option for those new to development, but had enough variation for advanced developers to make the most of it. 2) A Scored Earth / Tanks game. A slightly harder game to get right, especially with regards to the game mechanics. Finally they could opt for an Operation Wolf 3D remake. This was a much harder game to get right, especially with regard to the amount of media required, but we were pleased to see people have a go.

The prizes on offer were many and varied - in previous competitions we tended to offer a small amount of large prizes. This time around we sourced many many smaller prizes from our great sponsors including ATI, Live Publishing, Focus Multimedia, FastTrak and more. With over 180 prizes in total this meant everyone had a chance to win something (providing their game was up to scratch!). We also rated games differently this year, rather than just pick the Top 10 games we gave every single one a rating category between 1 and 3 stars. Although when you do something like this (rate each game) it opens the results up to much more scrutiny and discussion than usual, we felt it was only fair to let every entrant know where-abouts their game lay in the overall scheme of things. So without any further ado here are all of the games submitted in category order. You can click on any of the game titles to jump to our competition results web site where you'll be able to read a review of the game, view a large screen shot, see the pros and cons as we saw them and download the title.

First please see the next section for the Top Games of the competition, after which you'll find all of the entries listed.

A word about the ratings. We have placed icons next to each title so you can see at a glance what category it falls into. They are as follows:

		The best of the best! The top winning games
		Very playable high rating games
		Playable, but has some issues
		Just about playable but needs serious work
		Not even worth a prize
		We couldn't get the game to work, but have thrown it a life-saver which means send us a working version and we'll re-review it and still perhaps award a prize

Here are all of the games submitted to the TGC 2004 Competition. Click any game title to see a review, large screen shot, prize/s awarded (if any) and download.

Rating Game Title Source code included? DarkBASIC or DarkBASIC Professional 3D Bang Bang! Yes DarkBASIC Professional 3D Snake Yes DarkBASIC Professional Ack-Ack II Second Strike Yes DarkBASIC Professional Alien Egg Hunter Yes DarkBASIC Professional Ant Academy Yes DarkBASIC Professional BattleFieldMT Yes DarkBASIC Professional Blast Yes DarkBASIC Professional Boatz Yes DarkBASIC BrickLand Storm Yes DarkBASIC Professional Bubble Blaster Yes DarkBASIC Professional Burnt Soil Yes DarkBASIC Professional Burnt Terrain Yes DarkBASIC Professional Cannon Fury Yes DarkBASIC Professional Caterpillars - The Revenge Yes DarkBASIC Professional CaterpillarZ Yes DarkBASIC Professional Centipede Yes DarkBASIC Professional Centipoid Yes DarkBASIC Professional Coil Partly DarkBASIC Professional CrAzY Snake Yes DarkBASIC Professional Cubel Yes DarkBASIC Professional CyaterNake Yes DarkBASIC Dark Snake Yes DarkBASIC Professional Diet Yes DarkBASIC Professional Fantom Subdivision A Yes DarkBASIC Feeding Time Yes DarkBASIC Gang Wars of New Canada Yes DarkBASIC Professional Gerballs Yes DarkBASIC Professional Growing Blocks Yes DarkBASIC Professional Hissing Sid Yes DarkBASIC Professional i-snake Yes DarkBASIC Professional IceSnake Yes DarkBASIC Professional Kiss My Asp! Yes DarkBASIC Professional Manamana Yes DarkBASIC Professional Medieval Mayhem Yes DarkBASIC MuckRaker Yes DarkBASIC Professional Mummifed Yes DarkBASIC Professional Nibble It No DarkBASIC Professional Operation Dragon No DarkBASIC Operation Entity Yes DarkBASIC Professional Operation Wolf The present Yes DarkBASIC Professional Operation WTF! Yes DarkBASIC Professional Operation Z-Force Yes DarkBASIC Professional Ouroboros Yes DarkBASIC Professional Penguin Run Yes DarkBASIC Professional Rat's Lullaby Yes DarkBASIC Reptile No DarkBASIC Professional Ring Worm Yes DarkBASIC Professional Rock Chukka's Yes DarkBASIC Rocket Buggies Yes DarkBASIC Professional Scorched Fur Yes DarkBASIC Professional Shichinin No Himesama Yes DarkBASIC Professional Shut Your Mouth Yes DarkBASIC Professional Silent Strike Yes DarkBASIC Professional Singed Earth Yes DarkBASIC Professional Slither Yes DarkBASIC Professional Smooshy Snake Yes DarkBASIC Professional Snake Advanced Yes DarkBASIC Professional Snake Trouble Yes DarkBASIC Professional Snakeanator Yes DarkBASIC Snakebite No DarkBASIC Professional Snakes and Ladders Yes DarkBASIC Professional Snikey the Snake Yes DarkBASIC Professional Tank Commander Yes DarkBASIC Professional Tankoids Yes DarkBASIC Professional Tanks2k Yes DarkBASIC Teh 1337 Worm Yes DarkBASIC Professional tgfkas Yes DarkBASIC Professional TING (Tron Inspired Nibbles Game) Yes DarkBASIC Professional VegiTosa Yes DarkBASIC Professional Virtual Lawn Mower Yes DarkBASIC Professional Warfare Yes DarkBASIC Professional Code Name Wolf No DarkBASIC Professional Worm Yes DarkBASIC Professional Worm Yes DarkBASIC Worms Arena Yes DarkBASIC Zeyland Rescue Yes DarkBASIC Professional

Christmas is nearly here (yet again!) so if you are thinking about ordering any of our boxed items it is essential you order early to avoid disappointment. The following are the last posting dates as advised by Royal Mail, which means your order needs to be placed at least 24 hours before:

All UK Orders	21st December
USA and Canada	10th December
Germany	13th December
France	13th December
Australia	6th December
Japan	10th December
Hong Kong	6th December

Due to the significantly larger volumes of mail at this time of the year we strongly suggest you order well in advance of the dates given above.

From the same team that bought you Treemagik comes this great new package. Designed for low polygon needs, Plant-Life delivers to game designers a unique approach to creating photo-realistic foliage media for use in their games. Without sacrificing quality, Plant-Life creates vivid, colorful and realistic foliage media at the lowest poly-count possible.

The main goal was to build a tool that was easy-to-use whilst maintaining the level of detail required to produce high quality, photo realistic 3D media. You can now easily populate your game scenarios with unique and unlimited plant designs.

Ease of use: Within Plant-Life you'll find sliders, gadgets, buttons and input boxes. These simple to navigate gadgets allow unique creation to the plant media contained within PlantLife.
Bill-boarding Features: Not only can you export full 3D-media from within Plant-Life but you may also choose to export simple 2-poly billboard meshes to act as LOD within your projects.

Export Options: One of the most important aspects with an application of this nature is export options. Plant-Life provides a full-range of exporting options that will help get the media you create out of Plant-life and into your preferred game design tool. Supported formats include: .X (Microsoft), .OBJ (Wavefront), .SMD (Half-life), .TXT (Milkshape), .ASC (3DSMax), .DBO (DarkBASIC Professional), .B3D (Blitz3D), .RAW (Standard RaW), .CSM (catagrohpyshop4) and .WRL (VRML 1.0/2.0)

For lots more information and screen shots please see the new PlantLife web site.

PlantLife costs $44.95 (€34.99, £24.99) and is available now.

PlantLife Update
For those of you who have already purchased PlantLife, please download the following free upgrade to take your copy to the latest version:
PlantLife_Update_1003.zip (934 KB)

All boxed versions of our top-selling 3D game programming languages DarkBASIC and DarkBASIC Professional now come with these full great titles on CD free of charge, worth up to $77:

DarkMATTER - A collection of fully animated 3D models you can use, royalty-free in your own games. Models range from cars and jet fighters to soldiers, zombies, ammo packs and more. All fully textured and ready to drop into your games.

Riftspace - In this award-winning game (written in DarkBASIC) you can choose your role in true freeform gameplay spanning over 20 planetary systems, buy better ships, weapons, and even pilots as you manage a team of mercenaries. RiftSpace puts you in command and gives you the freedom to explore, trade, recruit, assign, negotiate, and battle for your success.

Starwraith - You have been enlisted to fly the most powerful starfighter of the future. Built for speed and armed with expiremental firepower, the new generation of space combat technology is yours to master as you lead your squadron through the dynamic campaign with two possible endings, engage in dogfight, team-vs-team, and cooperative multiplayer combat, and even create your own scenarios with the built-in mission designer (Please note that Starwraith is only included with DarkBASIC Professional).

Place your order today and receive these titles free automatically!

The NG Collision DLL (details below) has three new packages available for it. The first is an implementation of the DLL for DarkBASIC Classic users and the second is for Blitz3D users. Also just released is a special C++ Package that provide a set of wrappers to use the NG collision functions in your own C++ games.

Access Keys for all of the above packages are available directly from the NG web site "Product Registration" section. This is open to anyone who has purchased the NG DLL in the past (you will already have access details to the download area).

What is NG Collision?
The NG Collision DLL Version 3 is a comprehensive suite of commands that will allow you to perform the most complex collision possible directly within your games. No matter how fast your players (or bullets!) are moving, collision will be accurately calculated every time. How about performing sliding collision around a large complex 3D object? Easy. Or having the player collide with a moving platform such as a lift? Again - the NG DLL will do this all for you.

Spiral Graphics Inc. has released the Wood Workshop, a powerful seamless texture generator that specializes in the creation of tiling wood textures. The application can be downloaded for free from the company's website.

The Wood Workshop was designed to allow users to quickly achieve a variety of effects simply by adjusting sliders and making selections. The application contains a total of well over 200 sliders and selectable options, meaning that as well as being free, it is likely the most detailed procedural wood generator ever created.

Over 100 fully editable preset textures come included in the Wood Workshop. As well as being perfectly seamless, all textures created with the Wood Workshop are resolution-independent, allowing designers to simply re-render their textures at different sizes as requirements change.

Tito the Bouncing Alien is a very successful commercial DarkBASIC game, and Super Tito is the sequel!

Super Tito's story plays out in a fun, colorful comic book, full of real life mystery, humor and drama as the main protagonist, Tito, searches for his missing love Yoni and confronts his greatest fear, the evil Zombie Pirate. Over the course of 8 huge levels and a final Boss Level, Tito bounces his way through huge environments such as jungles infested with alien eating plants, caves full of ghosts and skeletons, sandy coast lines covered with pirate ships and pirates, a secret gold mine and a final showdown that takes place at the gates of hell.

Super Tito is powered by D&K UGM brand newly updated, state of the art, real-time 3D cartoon rendering engine code named 'aCET' (Almost Cutting Edge Technology). Coded from the ground up to take advantage of all the latest technologies found in modern day gaming, such as those so called Polygons, Texture Maps and Stereo Sound. Also aCET features a brand new custom written Cell Shaded Animation System, that give a very comic book feel to the whole game. All this Tech adds to the excitement of bringing our games to life into this exciting new media of electric gaming.

A chart topping musician from Europe has put his heart and soul into producing a totally original score for the game that will have gamers humming along to tunes for hours after completing the game.

The screen shots look awesome! So go and check them out. We'll review the final game here when it's ready (and we can't wait - that Rocket section looks cool!)

"I Support Learning" has just released their first immersive video game development curriculum for grades 6-12. Using a first person story approach, students learn the basics of programming and creating 3D video games as an intern at a software company. To teach the basics, they use the DarkBASIC Classic engine and take the students through the learning step by step using text, animations and video. Students learn by doing as they edit and create game code to meet the specifications and design needs of the project.

They offer three different versions of the Video Game Development curriculum: a Middle School version (grades 6-9) with projects for 4-8 weeks of classroom activities; a High School version (grades 10-12) with projects for 4-12 weeks of classroom activities; and a Home Learning version (grades 6-12).

To learn more about the Middle or High School versions go to http://www.isupportlearning.com/videogamedev.htm

To learn more about the Home Learning version go to http://www.isupportlearning.com/hm/index.htm

The annual Unofficial Dark Basic Conference was once again organized by The Coding Area in sunny Chichester. The conference was sheduled for Saturday and Sunday but most of the attendants arrived on the Friday to settle in. Settling in for many actually involved going to "Chigaco Rock" and dancing the night away with the occasional (!) beer. Saturday started early (far to early for the star guest - a Mr. L. Bamber) with Mike Johnson giving a presentation on the newly released Particle and Cloth expansion pack with plenty of interesting demos projected onto the big screen for all to see, demonstrating various eye catching effects that can be achieved with the new pack. Mike then went on to demonstrate the advanced terrain pack, showing the benefits of using LOD and the speed increases it brings. Ravey was up next showing the Ghost Train demo (utilizing the cloth and particle commands) and the new Dark Dungeon demo which is an FPS game written with the latest product from TGC - The Dark Game SDK, making full use of shaders and dynamic lighting, with decent AI. After lunch and much gaming activity, RobK gave a talk on his Blue GUI plug in for DBPro which gives users the ability to create user interfaces easily. Following RobK's talk was Philip Young (Bear) giving a talk on Copyright Law relating to the games industry, explaining the terms used, the pitfalls to look out for and how to avoid them. It was then time for what everyone had been waiting in anticipation for - the FPSC talk from Lee Bamber.

Lee started off by demonstrating the editor and how easy and intuitive it was to use. Within a matter of minutes Lee had built a level comprising of interconnecting rooms, added guns, ammunition, doors and an enemy to shoot. He then light mapped the level, and with one simple click he played the game he has just designed. Lee showed off many of the effects and situations that could be created including dynamic lighting, lockable doors, stairs, transporters, smoke emmiters, windows that you could shoot and would shatter and much much more. After Lee's talk everyone headed off for food to the local KFC (which actually felt like it wasn't local at all by the time we got there) and afterwards, due the to interest generated by Lee's presentation, everyone headed back to the conference room for a further talk from Lee on the more advanced side of FPCS - the AI scripts. Lee showed how almost everything in the game is controlled by an AI script (even the title pages) and how you could use pre built scripts, tailor them to your own needs or write them from scratch yourself. Sunday took a much slower pace that Saturday as everyone relaxed and had a general chat, played some games and generally chilled out (it is rumored some found their way to the bar). Some of us stayed Sunday night also to head back Monday morning, so it seemed appropriate to spend the evening at the hotel discussing the weekends events until the early hours. A very enjoyable time for all involved, and a real nice bunch of people.

Our community forums are always an interesting place to hang out! Here is a summary of interesting threads you may wish to look at:

DarkQUAKE - Pip Nayler is releasing a DarkBASIC Classic version of the Quake engine (or rather, Quake style features in a DB engine!). Plans are afoot to use this to create some decent games with.
Read more at LLRGT: DarkQUAKE

Plasma Cube - Ahh, liked this we did! Bought back waves of nostalgia :) A classic 16-bit demo effect in a few lines of code. Both DBC and DBPro versions included.
Read more: Plasma Cube

Asteroids in 20 lines - Here's a full asteroids game with progressively harder levels, shield bonuses, rocks and all media wrapped up in 20 lines of code. Genius.
Read more: Asteroids 20 liner

Infinite Lightning Demo - Continuing with the demo theme this month we have DarkGuys 'Infinite Lightning' demo. It's a neat little intro in the style of the old Amiga/ST/C64 creations with cool music and visuals. A little on the large side (2.5Mb) but worth it.
Read more: Infinite Lightning Demo

Water from Cloth - No it's not some miricle, it's just a cool way to make a realistic water effect by using the 3D Cloth plugin for DBPro. Source only so you need the DLL or it won't compile.
Read more: Water from Cloth

.NET IDE Source Code - John Youren has released the full source code to his VB.NET created IDE for DarkBASIC Professional, so you can expand upon it and add your own features.
Read more: .NET IDE Source Code

DarkFX - Hamish has released his DBPro Particle Engine with full source code. You can fade, ghost, colour, rotate, move, scale and texture particles with ease.
Read more: DarkFX

Lemmings Update - We reported on the Lemmings game remake a few issues ago and it has been updated yet again to include proper water effects and multiple entrances/exits.
Read more: Lemmings

3D Pool - Like several of the games in the competition the Newton Physics DLL is gaining popularity and this forum thread is a WIP log for a nice looking 3D Pool game.
Read more: 3D Pool

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 twig_and_wormy@???????.??? - just email us and a free copy of DarkBASIC Professional is yours.

The Game Creators web-site enjoys a steady and healthy volume of traffic. Day-in, day-out, we receive thousands of unique visitors to our web sites who are all interested in one thing - making games. If your company would like to consider advertising on our web site, or in our monthly newsletter which reaches over 10,000 readers, then please contact us now for further details and a copy of our rate card.

Well this month has been a monster release for games (Half-Life 2, Halo 2 and GTA: San Andreas spring to mind) and a pretty monstrous newsletter yet again, but it's all good stuff and just goes to show the diversity of both the TGC community and the direction the company is headed.

Got something you want thousands of people to read about in the next issue? Then get in touch! Email me: [email protected] or use our Feedback form.