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Sythe
Neophyte
5 Posts |
 Posted - Jan 18 2005 : 09:13:58 AM
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HI all.
I'm 17 and ive been working with VB since i was 13.
I'm pretty good with it now days, everything from winsock and parsing html to clickers macroers stuff like that. I can do pretty much anything i need to do... at one stage i wrote half a sprite engine using GDI but discovered gdi was shoddy and ditched it.
You guys are probably all more <3 at vb than me and i really want to get into vc++ but its just not the same.
I run www.runecms.com and www.sythe.org. At the moment im making shitty mouse macros using getpixel getcursorpos setcursorpos and some cos - sin spiraling techniques to help ppl macro at the online game runesacpe. I do this purely for rl money ;)
I am a BIG fan of the old point and click games, lucus arts ones in particular. The first game i ever played as loom. 16 colours, 8bit sound but still somehow the most inspiring game ive ever played. Recently i was reminded of it and discovered that lucas arts had brought our a 256 colour version on cd with full speech. I download a ScummVM copy of it yesterday. After playing it again it made me feel that the game deserves more credit than it was given in its time and wouldnt be amazingly hard to remake as the whole game takes just under 3 hours to finish on easy if you know basically what to do. This sort of thing would be great for my portfolio as a part time programmer when i get out of highschool.
Anyway normally im against using other ppls engines and would prefer to write my own but I dont know squat about rendering with open gl and i dare not use dx because of some negitives ive heard about using it with VB. What would be ideal is if someone could link me up with an already coded open GL sprite engine, but im willing to do the work on the engine myself if i must. I need some help getting an engine together and i dont want to take to long about it incase i loose my inspiration.
Can anyone help me get a good open gl sprite engine or give me a guide on how to write one or anything in general that would help me out here. Also, open gl is only the graphical side, i have no idea how to fade music with sfx without dx :O - so yeah advice, expirence, anything please post below :) thanks.
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cbx
Swordmaster
Canada
296 Posts |
Posted - Jan 18 2005 : 10:05:12 PM
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quote:
You guys are probably all more <3 at vb than me and i really want to get into vc++ but its just not the same.
Dude did you just call us all clowns!?! All kidding aside, you did not specify weather you are using vb or vb.net, i'm assuming you are using vb6.
I have been puttering with my own sprite renderer called DaFlak, and have attached it at the bottom of this post. It is written in vb.net 2002 but the similarities between DX8 and DX9 are such that if you decide to convert it to vb6 it should not be too difficult. One thing you will need to compile code is the version v1.0.900.0 of the DirectX9.0b managed libraries. You can find these MDX files on my web site here http://www.createdbyx.com/Default.aspx?tabid=32
If anything it might be worth a snoop.
Download Attachment:  DaFlak.zip<br>100.16 KB
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Created by: X
http://www.createdbyx.com/ |
Edited by - cbx on Jan 18 2005 10:05:52 PM |
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Sythe
Neophyte
5 Posts |
Posted - Jan 19 2005 : 12:09:24 AM
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yes i naturally assumed you all used vb6 as .net is balls (no offense)
I was looking for a open gl based engine. Dx i have heard is very difficult and quite unstable. |
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cbx
Swordmaster
Canada
296 Posts |
Posted - Jan 19 2005 : 12:57:07 AM
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| I find DX easy only because I have been using it since DX 7. I have been writing some stuff in opengl recently and it is much easier in some aspects but in others it's much harder. rendering geometry is easy. But texturing and using you own window to render to, is combersome and not overly streight forward. In terms of the stability of DX I think unmanaged DX is stable but all except the first release of managfed dx has been unstable. (At least for me.) DX7 and DX8 for vb6 are stable, but since I'm a dedicated vb.net user I don't use them. |
Created by: X
http://www.createdbyx.com/ |
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Sythe
Neophyte
5 Posts |
Posted - Jan 19 2005 : 11:17:25 AM
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im thinking about having another go at using gdi.
Loom was orginally released in 1990 with 16colors and 8bit sound/music
I think gdi can easily handle it, the biggest annoyence when using gdi is of course transparency. Theres 1337 million differnet ways to do it and nothing much i find on psc helps me decide which way is best.
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timbo152k
Squire
Canada
25 Posts |
Posted - Jan 19 2005 : 4:51:55 PM
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| Using GDI, transparency using masking is the best performance wise, there are some tricks and tips i can recommend to get the most bang from your buck though. If you need assistance with anything to do with GDI (buffering, blitting, transparency, translucency, loading sprites, etc.) or Win32 API in general, feel free to contact me (click on my name to the left of my post, and send me an e-mail.) - I wrote the PSC bitblt tutorial (BitBlit for the thick headed) and the revised version of that tutorial here on VBGamer.com |
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AT
Squire
18 Posts |
Posted - Jan 22 2005 : 7:33:49 PM
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For an old game like loom there is no reason I can think of not to go for a simple dx7 directdraw engine. I don't know what negatives you have heard about ... a resizable windowed dx7 engine with sound can be written in a few dozen lines and should be solid enough.
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2dcoder
Knave
83 Posts |
Posted - Jan 24 2005 : 10:27:09 AM
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"If you need assistance with anything to do with GDI (buffering, blitting, transparency, translucency, loading sprites, etc.)"
I would love to see a simple example of how to do translucency via GDI. Any chance you can point me to a link showing this? Actually, point me to a link that shows all of the above you mentioned! :) |
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Eric Coleman
Gladiator
USA
811 Posts |
Posted - Jan 25 2005 : 08:43:03 AM
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| Unlimited Realities has some really good stuff. You'll find their website in the "General" category on the links page here at vbgamer. They have a really nice alpha blending tutorial here that I think is really good. Of course, look at the other stuff as well. Click on the "knowledgebase" link at the top, and then click on 'visual basic.' |
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sdw
Warrior
USA
160 Posts |
Posted - Jan 26 2005 : 5:59:33 PM
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| Just use DirectDraw as AT said. Since it's VB, it's not going to be portable. Anything done in VB is probably better off using DX over OpenGL. |
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Loom remake - need help... OPEN GL SPRITE ENGINE??
