VBGamer

Ok... 1.) Why does a vb game developer need a premade game engine as simple as this one when he/she could make an equivalent which will work faster? 2.) Visual Basic is already a RAD, why does a vb game developer need yet another tool for less development time? 3.) This will create yet another dependency file for the game developer to distribute with their game. 4.) I would like to know who sumbitted those comments to your site on the right side of the page. 5.) Why should somebody waste their time to learn how to use this engine while he/she could accomplish every single one of the features offered by this engine with help from a few tutorials? 6.) Please tell me you're not trying to make money off of this thing by having people purchase a license for using it. 7.) Again, some of those 'user submitted' comments really bug me, especially these: >"Ok, I don't have to write my own >engine now, I can use yours and get >back to writing my game instead!" -THE ENGINE IS THE GAME!!!! >"Got an hour or so to kill? Boot up VB >and DXG and make a game!" -So someone actually sent you this comment? Because it sounds like a made-up advertisement to me... I really hope that you did not put a lot of time and effort into making this pointless engine...

Normally it's better to ignore such obvious attempts at negativity. Hopefully the folks at VBGame realize this and remove the negative comment. The comments on our website were indeed made by our testers/early users of the engine. Please keep in mind this product is NOT geared toward someone who has been writing games all their lives. It it is more geared toward developers who want to concentrate on writing their game, rather than writing a game engine. While we totally understand everyone is entitled to their opinions, however saying comments like this is a "pointless engine" isn't quite accurate. In the 2 days we have had it officially released, we've already had dozens of VB programmers who are excited about the development of this product. So download the DXGame Engine (it's free to try out), check out the demos and see if it gets any of your creative juices flowing. And yes we've spent quite a long time develping this engine and we plan on continuing development of this product. SDW, it would be more professional of you to email us directly about your concerns. Thanks.

Uhm, yeah, sdw, that was just cold. Yeah, the comments look a little "off" and big deal that hes trying to get money from it. Welcome to the real world. As for you, dxgame, just to let ya know, the background for your site is a big harsh on the eyes. Maybe try just solid black? Green on green is just too... flashy. And, when I tried installing the engine, the only thing that installed was a few .gif files and a link back to the downloads page. =P I dug around the CAB file and fount another setup exe, but it didn't run. =/

Oh yeah, and you might want to include some screenshots, real eye-catches to quickly judge a game since not many people sit down and read all the features before downloading it, just want a quick view if it is worth the time downloading. :)

seriously man, would those unsolicited comments on your site happen to come from ummm, maybe you and ..... you? seeing as there are no posts on ur forum people must have been mighty eager to get those emails to you. If the engine was developed in c/c++ and dx8+ then maybe there would be a market for it, however since it doesn't even support alphablending!!! which is a MUST nowadays even for shareware games I don't think you'll be getting many buyers. Sorry for being so negative but I'm just laying the facts out.

lol, sing it Shaedo. Anyways... negative comment? No, I'm only trying to make other people aware of the faults of this engine. You do not need to be writing games all of your life in order to make a game in Visual basic. It's called basic for a reason, lol, anyone can pick it up in a month or so without much programming experience. Concentrate on making their game? again, isn't the engine the core of the game? Sure saying that this engine is pointless was a bit harsh, but let me explain my reasoning for thinking so. I'm just guessing most game makers here re-use any DX code they've previously written for all of their games stored in some sort of module or whatever they prefer like I do. Your 'engine', if it is even considered an engine, doesn't seem to contain anything more than drawing functions and ways to control sprites. Maybe if you just released the sourcecode to it as a module it wouldn't be so bad for newbies to learn from, like setting up DX and stuff like that. But to try and make money off a dll containing DX functions which could all be found on DirectX4vb.com sounds pointless to me. Let me know how you do on sales. Btw, DXGAME, I did not want to email you directly about my opions because that would obviously get nothing done. Other people need to hear about what is wrong with your 'engine' first before they would consider using/purchasing it, which I hope everyone has enough sense not to do. Spodi, it's not that big of a deal because no one will purchase the dll *i hope*. Could you honestly tell me that you would consider buying something like this? For that matter, attempt to sell it? =)

"And, when I tried installing the engine, the only thing that installed was a few .gif files and a link back to the downloads page." Correct. It just installs the engine .dll. You need to download some source examples to actually see something happen. "seeing as there are no posts on ur forum people must have been mighty eager to get those emails to you." We have had several testers/beta testers with the engine for several months. Was it so bad to use various quotes from their emails during that period? "Your 'engine', if it is even considered an engine, doesn't seem to contain anything more than drawing functions and ways to control sprites." Out of all your blatant negative comments, this one is the most false of them all. And any one who downloads the engine, the source code demos, etc, will quickly realize this.

Hi Spodi......Thank you for your comments. We will take your views of the website under consideration. As far as eye catching graphics so they download something, this is not needed. It's better for target users of our engine to download the source code examples and see things happen "at the code level". Good or bad, keep those comments coming! We appreciate it very much! :)

I also think you're being a bit harsh, sdw. You are right that most VB game programmers are into building their own game engines ... but then most VB game programmers (or any type of hobbyist game programmers) sadly don't actually finish their games either. Also, the game engine is most definitely *not* "the game" ... however it is a required part of getting a playable game done. As someone who would rather spend time on design than programming, I appreciate efforts like dxgame is doing here ... and like what Peter did with his BioHazard (and maybe someday Alloy) engines ... and even what the folks behind BlitzBASIC and DarkBASIC, et al, are up to. Nice work dxgame -- carry on. However, would I pay $40 for it when I can get Blitz for less? Doubtful. (And follow Spodi's advice on your website -- simpler background; cleaner, tighter, easier-on-the-eyes design.)

Crap ... sorry dxgame, I mistakenly deleted your most recent post here. *blush* You were giving prices of those other BASIC engines ... can you re-post that?

Also, can your engine do windowed mode and/or other color depths than 16-bit?

No problem. :) I was just pointing out that DarkBasic is currently $49.95 (the one that makes .EXE files.) ::: http://darkbasic.thegamecreators.com/?f=order ::: And that Blitzbasic Plus (2D Games) is $60.00 ::: http://www.blitzbasic.com/Shop/_index_.php ::: As far as our engine goes, yes it supports any bitdepth but default support is 16-bit. We are focusing on full screen mode only games. It's important to realize what we are trying to accomplish here with this product. We do not expect the "tech heads" to fall in love with this product. Stability, ease of use, plenty of "game features" builit in IS important. We wanted the mass of VB coders to have something that will allow them to write GOOD games or demos quickly, using VB and not having to move to another environment. (The background is updated by the way, thanks!) :)

This time I did a little more looking into this 'dx engine', but was stopped instantly when the examples crashed. I was going to try to see for myself what this 'engine' really offered that is not something easily done with a few *FREE* tutorials. Instead I looked at the code and nothing looked to be very customizable. Then I went back to the 'dxengine' homepage and tried to find what all the features of this engine were, not a whole lot even someone like myself couldn't figure out. I had a little bit of relief when I found you were only charging people money for non-freeware games, but then this engine doesn't look to be able to make anything worth buying anyways. If you say this engine is capable of other things than just some drawing routines and sprite management, explain to me what it is cause maybe I'm just too stupid to see it. =)

SDW - I think your motives have been made perfectly clear for all to see. I think it's time for VBGamer to do the right thing and just erase your comments and stop you from publicly slamming our efforts. It's getting to the point of liable slander.

To the staff at VBGamer. We did some research on SDW. At first we thought he was up to something a little more sinister than we realized. Now that we know he's just a kid, we can rest. Please excuse our last post. As a matter of fact you can erase our last post and this one! SDW - Thanks for giving the guys here something to do for the past few hours, but you've been officially demoted to ignore status. :) LOL...

Now who's 'not very professional'? =) Pointing out the fact that I am still very young, and that you're very immature, does not help your case at all, if anything it just makes matters worse. I believe the majority of VB game makers are 'just kids' too. Yes I am 16 years old and currently programming in vb merely as a stepping stone in my software engineering career. But I don't see how pointing out my young age really helps your case, if anything it's only making matters worse for you. Think about it, even a young 16 year old kid can see everything wrong with your 'dx engine' library without even needing to do much research with it, kind of like how you didn't need to do much research to find my age in the members directory. Yeah most of my comments will be seen as very harsh and mean and most likely be erased, but I hope enough people have read my posts and realize now that there are just *TOO* many things wrong with your 'dx engine', and to top it off you'd like a $40 registration charge for shareware games, while this 'dx engine' really does not offer very much. Before I leave, I'd like to add that you've been avoiding my questions of "What features does this engine offer I cannot get anywhere else for free?". Also, seems to me that you want my posts removed only so that other programmers to not see the faults you're unable to explain.

Heh, sorry DXGame, didn't realize it just installed the engine (should've figure it out when it said "Installing dxgame.dll" or whatever! =P). Thanks for changing the background also, soooo much better on the eyes. ;) Checked out the multiple scrolling layer demo (or something like that) and that was pretty cool. Good job. But yeah, you might want to think of adding a bit more functions to the engine, or, better yet, upgrade to DX8. :)

Hi Spodi, Thanks for checking out the demo. That particular demo has already caught the eye of several users. ::: (Why is it, everyone doesn't mind emailing us, but doesn't want to use the forum? LOL!!) ::: As far as functions go, there are far too many to list here. I would however be interested to hear what functions you think the engine is missing since you said it needs more. That would be very interesting. Feel free to post it here if you like, or email us at info@dxgame.com. As far as DirectX 8 goes we ofcourse are looking into that. But one thing that is nice about DirectX 7, your games can run on even the modest of graphics cards. And that is very important to us.

Well, like previously mentioned, alphablending, and lighting. Along with these come a great list of stuff, such as particle effects, shadows (realtime ones), fog, and water (that you can acually see the bottom of) to name a few. :)

Hey everyone, Ok, the flamewar has to stop now. I'm surprised there is such a huge outburst over a DirectX 7 wrapper =) I don't understand why some people have undertaken this game engine to be their own personal problem. Don't worry, no one is making you use it. If its good, people will use it, if its not, no one will use it, regardless of what's said in this thread. In any case, its easier to criticize than create, so play nice from now on ;) Any further flames in this thread _will_ be deleted, so say what you have to say but don't turn it into a flame. Sounds simple?

One quick comment, I havnt actually tried the engine myself (no Need, Ive made my own DX7 engine before, and now making a DX8.1 one). If you want to charge, thats your business, abit unusual to charge for an out of date wrapper but hey, I dont think its a wise move as your pushing traffic away from your engine then :( also the fact SDW is only 16, by the sounds of your engine it seems as though your actually aiming towards the younger, less intelligent programmers with this project are you not? The beginner status for VB proigrammers tends to be teenagers...Good luck wtih the project, hope you realise your mistakes and correct them as soon as to improve your market. Kain.

Well, just tried the engine and i no further comments then the ones allready made. I will list some feature since dxgame won't. Collition detection commands, standard dx draw functions, standard dx audio functions, standard maybe limited dx control,sprite/tile control and hiscore commands. Since this is a engine your should automate the lost surface / exclusive mode commands. If it's not ment for tech then i would suggest you add like objects instead of just drawing commands commands (Class objects).

This will be the last time we comment on any of these notes regarding our product here on VBGamer. If you want to discuss the engine please visit our website and log into the forum. There is way too many features to list here. And we will not be dragged into a false point/counter point session. It just makes all parties involved look bad. We certainly appreciate all of the interest in this product. The DXGame Engine at version 1.0 is capable of some truly awesome 2D games. (And it's only at version 1.0.1!!) As they say "a picture is worth a 1000 words" so we'll leave it at that for now. The "pictures" are indeed coming. :)

The current 2D engine has been updated to v1.0.4. Check out the website for the latest additions. "2D via 3D Hardware Version" We are also working on an enhanced DirectX 8 "2D via 3D Hardware" version of our engine that will contain alpha, rotation, scaling, support. The goal will still be to provide a high level easy to use wrapper for 2D games. We expect the first version of this enhanced engine to be available in May 2004.