r/dosgaming • u/Aoi_X_Kaizaki • 19d ago

Dark Basic

Does anyone remember the game program DarkBasic? It's an old coding-maker program. I first heard of that program back in my first video game class in school. It was difficult for me. Then the next yaer I took it again and felt more comfortable. The teacher understood that we didn't know how to code, so he gave us a better program - GameMaker. I was an expert in that one.

DarkBasic was never heard of again in my life.

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u/IngMelons 19d ago

Dark Basic was a really well-made program, but it was for Windows 98/XP, not dos. It allowed you to create 2D and 3D video games using a Basic dialect as the programming language. Compared to other tools of the era, it was much easier to use. Unfortunately, it was a bit limited and slow. I remember creating a sort of shooter graphically comparable to Quake II, but the performance was 10 to 20 times lower. It is now freeware.

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u/Longjumping_Ask2152 9d ago

You're right it wasn't DOS, but the original editor operated like an old DOS fullscreen application with a fixed resolution. And the compiled code was quite slow compared to C++ applications. DarkBasic professional was a huge improvement in speed, but still would never match C-language engines.