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THE HISTORY OF TDXLIBRARY.ORG AND THE TDX_LIBRARY
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The TDx_Library was developed by one person, Darren Dwyer, working fulltime for 15+ years, and part-time for another 8+ years, with minimal help and minimal money invested by other interested parties, and very rarely, a registration. ... The entire time, 23+ very long years, we have been giving away our working software for FREE, all while Darren has earned zero wages, has lived well below the poverty line (less than 25% of average weekly earnings), and has struggled to pay the bills and buy food, all while trying to keep tdxlibrary.org alive, paying all development costs, investing every last cent into tdxlibrary.org, with the dream that maybe, just maybe, it might be a way out of poverty... ... So, this is the story sofar :- It was 1996, Darren was comfortably working in a job, programming Delphi for corporate clients, earning pathetic wages, hating the boss, and wanting to write computer games for a living. Like any other person with a dream, and blinded-by-the-bright-lights-of-the-dotcom-boom Darren investigated the various programming tools available... Delphi or C++ Builder or Visual C++ and decided it was time to establish a new venture... Of these (3) different competing environments, C++ Builder seemed to offer the best potential, mostly because it worked the same as Delphi, and yet it was solid C++, so most of the old code should work perfectly. Darren and Hugh joined forces and invested in Borland C++ Builder v1, Darren quit his job, and started games programming, thinking he could have a game developed in a year or two... over 20 years of programming experience and a mostly-completed DOS game were all the motivation that was required... Unfortunately, it was only to find that Borland C++ Builder was totally crap for writing games. It had all sorts of problems, especially the fact that graphics and sounds were totally non-existant, and writing a networking game required a Phd in networking... ... Then DirectX 3 came onto the market, and it sounded perfect, since it had advanced support for graphics and sound effects and networking, so Darren decided to use DirectX 3 in his computer game... ... Only to find it totally incompatible with Borland C++ Builder... ... By this stage, all our money had run out, and so Darren was forced to come up with a new concept, something that would make enough money to fund his computer games dream, while at the same time creating much of the hard programming work that would be required to write advanced computer games in future. Very early on, about mid-1997, Darren decided to create a solution to integrating Borland C++ Builder v1 and DirectX 3... fixing all the compatibility problems between DirectX and C++ Builder, and the TDirectDrawForm was born... flicker-free, transparent access to DirectDraw for standard VCL components... A year later, darren had developed a hand-coded TDirectDrawForm that seemed to be commercially viable and we launched it onto the internet... only to see no sales for the entire year... even though it worked, it was years ahead of it's time and there was absolutely minimal demand for such an advanced tool. During this time, darren had learnt a lot about DirectX and BCB and began visualizing a series of DirectX components for Borland C++ Builder, just a few, and we started developing an all-new concept, the TDx_Library, DirectX components for BCB, by hand-coding, only to find it was too massive a project for hand-coding. So, darren came up with a prototype component skeleton generator, generated some component skeletons, and started hand-coding the rest of the TDx_Draw_Library v1.00, using the knowledge of DirectDraw learned from trying to create the TDirectDrawForm, making sure he limited the total amount of work we all had to do. After 6 months of this, we realized that there had to be a better way... We convinced Brian to join and he invested minimum seed capital, and work began... ie. Darren began working on a massive improvement to the skeleton generator, and the BCB_Code_Generator v1.00 was born. This was a massive undertaking that took us 8 very long years to complete. But, during the first year, it helped us produce raw prototype (90%++ generated) TDx_Draw_Library v1.00 skeletons. A year later, we had developed and released the TDx_Draw_Library v1.00. And it worked. ... A year later, things were still going well, no sales or anything, but we started working on the TDx_Sound_Library, only to find it much harder to integrate into Borland C++ Builder, and we were starting to get into financial difficulties, with our initial capital having completely run out, and no sales to date... 12 months later, after thousands of coding attempts and thousands of reboots, the TDx_Sound_Library v1.00 was working... well, compiling at least... Then, very quickly, DirectX went from v3 to v5.1, v6.1, v7.0a, and Darren spent all his time upgrading and improving his 2 basic component libraries and the BCB_Code_Generator, making everything compatible with firstly BCB3, then later BCB4, then eventually BCB5 as Borland progressively upgraded and released improved versions of C++ Builder, all while simultaneously making each successive library compatible with each progressive upgrade of DirectX, by implementing massive cross-referencing and upgrading of our DirectX databases for each upgrade of DirectX. At the same time as Darren and Hugh were doing all this, Brian was prototyping the TDx_Input_Library and TDx_Play_Library. And to make matters worse, DirectInput and DirectPlay and Direct3DI were much harder to get working in BCB than either DirectDraw or DirectSound. Including Darren having to patch the actual DirectX 7.0a SDK in order to get it to work with Borland C++ Builder... That was tricky... ... The years went past, no real sales, no real website traffic, no nothing... Just 120 hours a week of development... wake up, work, go to sleep, 7 days a week, for 7 years... Creating and upgrading the BCB_Code_Generator, creating and upgrading incredibly massive DirectX databases, creating and upgrading component libraries, help files, html references, demos, tutorials, information pages, the rest of the website, etc... ... Meanwhile, 100-500+ people a month downloaded our components for free... a dozen or so people actually bothering to sign-up each day... ... and nobody registered... or invested money... or helped... or anything... In 1999, after 2 years of effort, Brian had had enough, no return on his investment of time and money, and he pulled out, and stopped programming, and stopped investing money, and things went from bad to worse for darren and hugh. At about the same time, about year 2000, Hugh stopped investing his considerable time and effort also, leaving darren in the big-wide world to continue on all alone. ... And that is exactly what happened. Darren took over and continued on from where Hugh and Brian left off, working in solitary confinement for the next 18+ years, working on v1.4x, v1.5x, v1.6x, v1.7x, v1.8x, v1.9x, and now v2.00, and ended up eventually completing the TDx_Library as it now stands, all 107 fully documented DirectX 7.0a components, arranged in 5 different advanced, cross-referenced component libraries for Borland C++ Builder v1,3,4,5,6++ For about 3-4+ years, darren has also been working to create the TDx9_Library, something which required a massive upgrade to the BCB_Code_Generator, plus a hell of a lot of learning... Occasionally, Hugh has been able to help, for example, he's worked on the TDx9_Graphics_Library icons and descriptions, but other than that, it's all Darren's work. Hugh and Brian are no longer involved with this project. ... This upgrade cycle for DirectX was massive, with each progressive upgrade of DirectX growing the size of the SDK exponentially, with Microsoft throwing millions of dollars and dozens, then hundreds of developers at it... DirectX 3.0 was massively upgraded and became DirectX 5.1, then it was DirectX 6.1, then DirectX 7.0a... ...then DirectX 8.1 and 9.0a,b,c... now DirectX 10 for Vista... and DirectX 12 for Windows 10... And meantime, we have been trying to keep up with Microsoft's efforts, just one programmer, darren. ... The whole time, development continued on the BCB_Code_Generator, including a complete rewrite, support for DirectX 9.0c, for project files, readme files, batch files, help files, html files, .cpp and .h files, etc. Eventually the BCB_Code_Generator became commercially viable and the component libararies began to work, and integration problems between DirectX and Borland C++ Builder were slowly being solved, and working component libraries began to develop, first the TDx_Draw_Library, eventually followed by the TDx_Sound_Library, followed by the TDx_Input_Library and later the TDx_Play_Library and TDx_3DI_Library. Each library took approximately 12-18 months to develop, debug, and learn enough to code demos and tutorials. ... For 7 long years, it was a matter of creating databases, upgrading databases, writing the BCB_Code_Generator, prototyping component libraries, learn how to use the libraries, etc. The entire 7 years, we just gave away our components for free, mostly so we could get them tested in the marketplace before we were ready to commercialize them. ... Eventually, after 10.5+ years of no money and total involvement in a dream, Darren's initial vision of RAD DirectX components has now become reality... the BCB_Code_Generator is now v2.0, it works perfectly, and we have five 100% completly working component libraries for Borland C++ Builder v1,3,4,5,6 and DirectX 7.0a... And databases and prototype code for all of the DirectX 9.0c SDK for Borland C++ Builder v1,3,4,5,6... It's just a shame so many people have abused our generosity for so long... read below... ... Sofar, the TDx_Library has cost millions of dollars to produce, if you don't include the fact that Darren has missed earning wages for 23+ years, and continues to forgoe wages in order to keep this project alive on a month-by-month basis. And don't forget years of 120-hours-a-week working weeks... ... The entire time, we have been giving away our older tools for FREE in the hope that people would value all the time, money and effort we have poured into developing our tools, and ultimately, register our tools and give us some kind of financial reward for our long-term development efforts. Unfortunately, none of these free-users ever really bothered to register (1 did), and thousands of people have since come to our website and downloaded our tools for FREE. ... This was a steep learning curve, whereby we truly believed the Borland C++ Builder community would value all the hard work, money and effort that we'd put in creating such advanced and powerful toolsets. It was clear to us that a lot of people valued our efforts - as long as they didn't have to pay anything. See, everyone wants RAD DirectX, everyone wants a complete end-to-end RAD DirectX solution, but nobody wants to pay the authors anything and everyone wants it all for free. Unfortunately, it took us 10.5 long years of having practically no return on our investment to realize that people are inherently greedy, especially computer programmers, and that computer programmers have no concept of the realities of the costs of developing software. ... There is nothing quite like our tools anywhere else on the internet. 10.5+ years of fulltime vastly voluntary effort attempting to produce the best tools we can imagine has resulted in just that - the best tools we can imagine, working right now, ready to go! Please, if you want to try these tools and appreciate all the effort that has gone into developing them, then don't delay, register today... ... Your registration fee is used to pay for the ongoing costs of running the website and computer, plus some reward for the actual authors and co-owners of the TDx_Library. ... We work all day, every day on this project... This is a lot of work. And it costs a lot of money to continue doing it. When there's enough registrations, we work fulltime and more gets done. When there's not enough registrations, we work part-time and less gets done... When there's no registrations, or no money coming in, we find work elsewhere, and very little gets done on www.tdxlibrary.org and the TDx_Library and TDx9_Library... ... Each complete TDx_Library registration or TDx9_Library pre-registration achieves the resulting effect of completely paying for one entire week of development at tdxlibrary.org. Please register or pre-register today and help us develop more stuff sooner... We are desperate for each and every registration, and we treat our registered users like real human beings... ...if you have any questions or comments, we are always at the end of our email address... darren_john_dwyer@hotmail.com Please, register our tools today, you will never be happier than the day you decided to use our tools. Thanks, - Darren Dwyer, - Creator of www.tdxlibrary.org, the TDx_Library, the TDx9_Library and the BCB_Code_Generator.
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