I want to program games in Visual Basic. I dont know where to start. Can any of you nice people here tell me what I should start learning,ANYTHING,and like give me a list of steps. It owuld help me a LOT. Thanks a bunch,and BTW,im looking to make a MMORPG. Thanks

Simplest advice is: don't.

Hell VB isn't even a reallly good place to start for a game programmer, it hides way too many fundamental programming concepts such as what strings really are. IF you wanna write games, espeically stuff like a MMORPG, your gonna have to learn C/C++, though your gonna want to start with an easier language like Pascal or Basic. Don't do any RAD stuff like VB to learn programming, it will get u on a completely different thinking track than what u want for games. Plus making a game in VB is hell due to lots of limitations of the language itself.

Oh and you might want to start with games like tic tac toe, hangman, pacman, tetris, etc before tackling anything big. Hope that helps.



Edited by - LordElectro on June 2, 2001 1:05:44 PM

Making a game in VB isn''t that bad...the language isn''t THAT limited. If you already know how to program in VB, then you download the DirectX8 SDK from Microsoft. If don''t already know a programming language, and am starting from scratch then I''d recommend purchasing a good Book. There are plenty of good Entry-level books for programming...and I''d suggest a Wrox Publishing book on Beginning C++.

Once you''re proficiant in a language (either VB or C++) then come back here! There are lots of tutorials off the main page that will help you.
Also, remember that games are some of the most complex programs to write...for a production-level game usually a team of 40 people (programmers, QA!!, artists, designers, etc) spend over a year working on it for 40 hours a week...that''s 83,200 man hours. So don''t get discouraged when your first tic-tac-toe game takes long time to make.

Epolevne

If you want to do DirectX programming in VB, the best place to learn is here: http://64.23.12.52/

VB under DirectX is not all that bad at all. Although using regular GDI for games programming is extremely slow. VB isn''t as fast as C/C++, but its not a bad place to start for a beginner.

RM.


-=Kicking Butt and Writing Code=-

I started programming games on VB 3 years ago, and now I make games for a living. Not in VB anymore, but it was a good place to start in my opinion. There''s many ways to do game programming in VB, and it all depends on how advanced you want to start. For something simple, start fooling around with the PaintPicture procedure built into all forms and pictureBox''s. It''s slow, but very very simple, so allows for high-level game development right off the bat. (PaintPicture is just a bitblt routine). If you''re interested in doing sprites in VB, email me. It''s not that hard, but you should be familiar with paintPicture first. If you want more speed, learn the winAPI to blit graphics around. If you want even more speed, start directX. But, for just starting off, paintpicture is fine, you won''t be programming Quake4 any time soon. When you get serious, move onto C and/or C++. You can start there, but it may be discouraging. I made some pretty cool games in VB. Super Mario clones, Final Fantasy clones, Eye of the Beholder clones, etc. It can be a lot of fun. Stick with it.