Has anyone heard of DarkBASIC?

Good idea, but the box I was reading said "Great to produce no distribute your own video game" It may only apply to that software bundle (if I could remember which)?

Does your copy of DarkBASIC have an installer (compiler) like option to put everything together for remote installation?

I found this at the 3D GameMaker's site's FAQ: Link

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Question: Can I sell the games I make with The 3D Gamemaker?
Answer: To sell your games you will need to buy a commercial use licence. The reason for charging is because The graphic elements, sounds and musics that make up The 3D Gamemaker (including the game logic itself) are (c) Dark Basic Software. If you are selling just one boxed or DVD product then you just need the single use license ($99). If you want to make many products then you need to buy the unlimted use license ($500). Links to these licenses can be found on the BUY pages of this web site.

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Question: After a game in 3d gamemaker has been created, is it possible to sell it on? Who owns the copyright? Can they be imported to playstation, etc?
Answer: It is possible to sell what you make with The 3D Gamemaker, however you will need to obtain a commercial license to do so. The reason for this is to protect the copyright of hundreds of media assets contained on the CD which adds up to many thousands of pounds in models, sounds and music. Copyright of all media assets are owned by Dark Basic Software Ltd. There are no plans to allow The 3D Gamemaker games to be exported to the playstation, not least for the technical and legal difficulties end users would suffer in attempting such a port.

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The commercial license is for the 3d Gamemaker only. DarkBASIC comes with a basic set of royalty-free textures, sounds, music, and models, but none of them are very special. The great thing about DB Classic and DBPro is that you can create or purchase your own textures, sounds, music and models for use in your game.

No version of DarkBASIC comes with any kind of installer-builder program to package your software into a distributable form. Both DB Classic and DBPro, however, have the ability to include all your media within 1 executable file. Your game would then be 1 file that can run anywhere. If you write your game to include several additional files and a directory structure, you could easily use WinZip or ZipCentral (freeware) to create your own executable zip file as a very simple installer if you wish. There are also shareware installer-builder programs out there as well.

Oh, and the current price for DarkBASIC Classic is: $39.99 (electronic download), or $49.99 (box set w/manual).

The current price for DarkBASIC Professional is $99.99.

So the core unit itself (darkBasic shell) is free to compose and distribute, so long as you don't use any of the media files? Or isn't the DB also covered by copyright and yang yang?

DarkBASIC is definitely a commercial product in every way. No part of it is free. In fact the cheapest version of DarkBASIC is DarkBASIC Lite which is $14.99. However, this version won't even let you create stand-alone executables (those that contain all the media for your program within the .EXE) -- you have to include all your media along with the runtime executable. Sorry.

If you're interested in DarkBASIC, I would recommend picking up the Lite version of it, and then upgrading to Pro if you find you're really enjoying yourself.

I have seen a ad of DarkBASIC on www.php-nuke.org