StarCraft doesn''t use DX at all. They used Smacker. The loading screen says so.

-Buzzy

What''s smacker? Never heard of it...

Hi all,

No, Starcraft does use DX (DirectDraw, DirectSound, DirectPlay and DirectInput). Smacker is a Video Encoder/Decoder (a very fast one, I might add ). Starcraft uses it in the portraits, and in the cutscenes.

Nicodemus.

Smacker is a lib for video/compression. You can access it

http://www.smacker.com/

As for why they don''t use flip, I cannot be sure.

1. Either, they store all the sprites in system memory and use fast asm blt (That would explain a 1 MB card can run it)

or

2. They found some way to trap the call when Ctrl-Alt-Delete is pressed and they call FlipToGDI (don''t think so)

I don''t know how the Diablo team actually did it, but just because there were different weapons and things doesn''t have to mean an artist has a few extra thousand images to draw. I expect this is where the 3D rendering program comes in. A lot of the time, it''s probably just a case of removing the sword model and replacing it with a mace model, for instance. Then you can run through all the same animations to generate a new set of sprites.

Well, I don''t know how Blizzard did it in Diablo 2 (haven''t seen the game yet) but I do know how UO did it, from writing an emulator...
Basically you have animation sets for each range of movement for each item, then you layer them like a paper doll. So first you have the "basic human" doing the motion (let''s use a basic downward "hit" for an example) in all possible directions. Then all items of clothing that that person is wearing would be layered on, and they have their own animation set. The weapon the person is holding has its own animation set as well. Using this "paper doll" method, it''s very easy to synch frames and to have dozens of potential items without having to make a sprite for every possible combo of items carried and worn.

-fel

Starcraft definitly uses directX... if they didn''t there wouldn''t be an "install DirectX 3.0" option... also the reason they chose such a low version of DirectX is to make the game compatible with Windows NT.

- king171@hotmail.com
- http://www.cfxweb.net/mxf/

While it's probably a good idea (for a while, at least) to not try to measure your work against the pros, don't fool yourself into thinking it's not possible to compete with them. Look at Tread Marks ( http://www.treadmarks.com ), which was single-handedly coded by the late great Seumas McNally before he was 21 years old. And the rest of the company/family consists of:

- Jim McNally, President (taking Seumas' place), Game and Level Designer
- Philippe McNally, Lead Artist and 3D Modeler
- Wendy McNally, Art Director

If you're really good at what you do and you put in the necessary time and effort, with the help of a couple like-minded partners you can create a professional quality game. While there is a certain amount of "talent" necessary, it's mostly about focus, attention to detail, and plain old hard work. I believe any successful developer would tell you that (I've heard it from Carmack already).

Edited by - Diragor on May 11, 2000 12:59:49 PM

Well, I have to say I agree with you there Diragor. You don''t really have to be super duper coder to make a great game, you just have to put a lot of work into your game. Although being a super duper coder helps