Hi everyone! I’m new to these forums and to programming. I want to make a game using DirectX and VB6, because VB is the only language I know. Even with VB, my programming skills are limited and I can only make really simple applications with it. I learnt some VB in high school last year, but they taught us nothing about DirectX, therefore I can’t make a game with it. Software I have: -Visual Studio 6.0 Enterprise Ed, most of it is useless to me, lol. -Microsoft DirectX 7 SDK. -Genesis 3D SDK 1.1 (a 3D engine that I will probably never use). -Shadow Realm Model Animator. I hope that anyone here could help me out by recommending any good books that would teach me how to make VB games (preferably 2D, tile-based) with DirectX. Tutorials would also be nice. I know that using C++ instead of VB would give me more “possibilities”, but since I’m only going to make a simple 2D game, I believe that VB is enough for me. If you know anything that could help me out, then please post here too. My final (for now) goal is to make a simple Massively Multiplayer Online RPG. Also, should I upgrade to Visual Studio.Net?

The sooner you learn C++, the better. You will rarely find a professional game being released that was made in VB.

Even if you choose to stick with VB, however, I very strongly suggest you take a while learning more about the language and garnering more experience before you delve into DirectX.

You probably don''t need Visual Studio.NET.

And there is no such thing as a "simple" MMORPG.


(offtopic... why the heck does *everyone* getting into game programming want to make a MMORPG? I didn''t.)

@ Sneftel, because they are the coolest!!!(MMOG''s)
@ Agent_K64 to do an mmog you will probably have to write at least a math library in C++ to be viable, try http://dx4vb.com, it''s a really good set of tutorials for direct draw. This site also has alot of good tutorials for direct draw, just look in the resource section. If you want to just hack out a game really fast though, i recommend using VB''s intrinsic controls as your game objects. Just take a picture box and put your sprite in it and use the move functions to animate, cycle through your pictures for animation. It''s really easy, and if you spend a little time it can look pretty good. Of course if you want to try a production level video game you will probably have to write a custom dx engine..( A word of advice, unless you have access to a really good artist 2d tile games are really tough, as your perspective is determined primarily by the artist.) Best of Luck.

quote:
The sooner you learn C++, the better. You will rarely find a professional game being released that was made in VB.

I don't think so, VB is also powerfull, maybe a little less than C but more than enough.
The advantage of VB is that it's easy and quick, and if he feels more comfortable with it he should use it. (20% fewer performances for 40% faster coding isn't that bad, is it?)
C++ and VB have both pro and contras, we are not here to discuss about it.

quote:
I hope that anyone here could help me out by recommending any good books that would teach me how to make VB games (preferably 2D, tile-based) with DirectX. Tutorials would also be nice. I know that using C++ instead of VB would give me more “possibilities”, but since I’m only going to make a simple 2D game, I believe that VB is enough for me. If you know anything that could help me out, then please post here too. My final (for now) goal is to make a simple Massively Multiplayer Online RPG.

First, i want to notice that making games and mastering directX are 2 fully different tasks. The first is hard to teach because each game is different, a FPS and a RPG have not many common points...
For directX, tutorials are spread anywhere on the net. Try the adress of Mealstromfor example. But, in fact, i find the tutorials included in the doc of the SDK (7.0) not so bad...(to start) But i have not enough experience with DX to judge anything.

quote:
you will probably have to write at least a math library in C++ to be viable

Possible but not necessary, personnally i won't do it because of 3 reasons:
-VB has also a very suprising fact: calculations with Longs are faster than with Integers, much faster. This unexpected fact make it as a good concurrence with c++ ints, the calculation speed is nearly the same than c++.
-A C math lib makes extern stuff in your app, personnally, i prefer to have everything in 1 language under my control
-Complications.

quote:
If you want to just hack out a game really fast though, i recommend using VB's intrinsic controls as your game objects. Just take a picture box and put your sprite in it and use the move functions to animate, cycle through your pictures for animation. It's really easy, and if you spend a little time it can look pretty good.

Personnally, i'm not fond of this solution. It is easy and quick (to make), yes, but it has also big disadvantages:
-Can't create new PictureBoxes during the game (for example when monsters appear). So you must decide of a maximum of active objects that can appear on the screen and manage the array of pictureBoxes.
-Loose much spead and memory.
-Could represent active objects with a class that you instanciate for each monster (for example) you need. Then, you decide if it draws itself or only store the needed informations (and another class is made to draw all pieces at one time).
Despite of this, his solution is an alternative if you like it.

[edited by - misterX on July 19, 2002 6:07:35 PM]