Results for "Author: simon price"
This tutorial will teach the complete newbie to DirectX/DirectSound how to Load, Play and Stop a sound (.wav) file. It is designed to be REALLY simple, there are more comments than there are lines of code (at least one comment per line of code!). Thanks to all the people who voted for my last tutorial (code of the month!), if you find this useful please do leave feedback and/or vote so I know that I should make more of this type of stuff. Look out for tutorial #3 - DirectMusic Intro!
This heavily commented code will teach you how to load, play and stop a MIDI file using DirectMusic. You need DirectX7 to run this. You also need the DirectX7 for Visual Basic library, which you can get from www.microsoft.com if you haven't already got it. And you need the MS Common Dialog control version 6. Please give feedback/vote if you appreciate the time I take to make these tutorial programs. Look out for the next tutorial - DirectDraw7 exclusive mode!
This article teaches how and why to use "flags", and goes through the Binary System and Logic Operators to explain this. Please give feedback and/or vote if you think this could be of benefit to alot of programmers. I got the idea for this article while making an ActiveX DLL for a card game, so the I promise article is applicable to many real programming problems and I do practice what I preach. - Simon Price http://www.VBgames.co.uk
This makes a 3D landscape with bitmaps. You need DirectX7 to run this. Please note that I have 2 accounts with PSC, both in the name of Simon Price, so to see my other submissions, do a search for my name.
This is a tutorial for a complete beginner to DirectX. This introduction shows you the very basics of using DirectDraw, with more comments than code to help explain everything in plain English. The resulting program will draw a picture and stretch it to fit the size of the form. IMPORTANT - This requires DirectX7 and the DirectX7 for Visual Basic Type Library. If this tutorial helps you, please give feedback and/or vote, because if there is enough interest, subsequent tutorials will follow.
Do you want to know how to use a DLL in your projects? Or are you having trouble learning DirectX? Then this is for you! Imagine you could start DirectX, change the screen resolution and create primary and backbuffer surfaces all with one function call? What if you could play a MIDI tune with functions that have names as simple as PlayMIDI (rather than DirectMusicPerformanceCreate)? What if you could write a program that animates a ball, has sound effects and music in 5 mins with under 50 lines of code? Well, you can! Included in the .zip is SiDXengine.DLL, which allows you to do all this with ease. Give up DX and learn SiDX instead! REQUIRES DIRECTX7. See readme.htm for more information.
This tutorial WILL teach you how to get started with using Direct3D Immediate Mode from Visual Basic. It includes background knowledge, definitions, explanations, a sample program to download, and exercises for you to practice on. I have spent hours, wrong, days planning, writing, testing and re-reading this so that it's almost a work of art. Seriously though, you will learn alot. I recommend a very basic knowledge of DirectDraw, but this is not required, and a fairly good general programming ability, since only DirectX terms will be explained in detail. If you think that this has helped you, interested you, or changed your whole life (OK maybe not), please vote and/or give feedback because I value your opinions. Especially if you think this was a bad tutorial, please tell me why and I will try to fix it.
Convert any color format (hex, long, rgb) to any other color format. There may be other examples of this on PSC, but I checked them and they do not use the same algorithm. This is not the fastest way to convert colors, but it is simple and reliable.
# IMPORTANT - COMPILE THE PROGRAM BEFORE RUNNING # This is a 3D starfield made using Win32 API but NO DIRECTX or other graphics DLLs. To give you some idea of the power, on my 400 Mhz PC it can render and animate 10000 stars at over 30 FPS! The # of stars is variable. The program is designed for pure speed and therefore does not have many features. This program is an example of 1/ Using pointers in VB 2/ Getting direct access to GDI graphics memory 3/ 3D to 2D transformations 4/ Fast manipulation of huge amounts of data (the stars coords) I know there are lots of other starfields on PSC, but I dare to claim that this is the fastest! Please leave feedback and rate the code.
I've had DirectX 8 installed for only a few hours so I've just made my first program to test it out. This would be useful for beginners. It spins around a pyrimid shape which glows different colors. Very simple and commented on almost every line. Probably requires some sort of hardware acceleration. After hours and hours of downloading 150MB through my 56KB/sec phone line, DX8 seems worth the wait. You'll be suprised at how easy it is to program! Although where is the support for 2D? I'd be interested in any 2D DX8 progs. Please comment if this is useful to you, or if you have any problems with it.
This is the screensaver with the COOLEST GRAPHICS YOU'VE EVER SEEN! You've got to see it in motion before it really works, as up to 20 fireworks simultanouesly shoot upwards at different angles and speeds, explode into different bursts of color, lighting up the surroundings slightly, and then sparkle and slowly disperse and fade away with really cool blending/blurring effects with the background!!! You have never seen anything like this. REQUIRES DIRECTX7 or higher, I have DirectX 8 and it worked fine but it should also work on DX7. You also need to have a monitor capable of 24 bit color. I would appreciate lots of VOTES AND/OR FEEDBACK because I worked very hard on this one! Visit my website at www.VBgames.co.uk!
Load and view .raw files! These 3D data files (supported by most 3D modelling programs) only contain a list of triangles, and so this program reads the files and renders a spinning wireframe model from them. As proof of VB power, I decided to make the program using VB code only (no DirectX or OpenGL, just 100% VB!). The program employs the use of the Windows API and look up tables to increase speed, and double buffering to increase smoothness. It renders about 50000 polys/sec so it can load medium size files and render them at a fair frame rate. Look how short the source code is compared to the results! Please vote/give feedback because I spent several hours getting this to work well! *** IMPORTANT NOTE *** Only run this program from the compiled .exe, if you run it from VB (in my experience, it may not happen to you), the program does not render all the polygons!
This tutorial is third in a series about Win32 API for graphics. In this tutorial, you will learn about functions that help draw various geometric shapes and how to use them in code, with a working example to download.
UPDATED AGAIN: 3 more major bugs fixed! UPDATED: many bugs fixed already ! *** engineX beta demo 1 *** engineX was designed to be as simple and reusable as possible. It uses DirectX 8. It features: - 3D graphics with support for hardware acceleration - dot, line and triangle primitives - materials - texture mapping with transparency - lighting - frame hierarchies - loads .x files - loads .exf files (a custom file format, made specifically for engineX, has it's own editor, not released yet) - collision detection - 2D and 3D sound (mono wave file only) - input from keyboard and mouse - MIDI music This demo was designed to demonstrate most of these features, as quickly and simply as I could. There are 2 sample worlds to choose from (see screenshots). In the demo you can just walk and look around, and bump into objects in your way. I need as much feedback and bug reports as possible, it's very hard to get DirectX to work on all OS's and hardware, I especially have problems with Windows 2000. PLEASE DO VOTE if you find the code to be useful/well written/cool in some way The demo is 1.9MB, so I couldn't upload it to PSC, please instead use this direct link to the zip file stored on my website. http://www.VBgames.co.uk/downloads/exdemob1.zip If you just need the source code because you've already got the resources, use : http://www.VBgames.co.uk/downloads/exdemob1src.zip
Learn every aspect of DirectX8 now! This HUGE tutorial covers DirectX 8, DirectSound8, DirectInput8, Direct3D8. It includes everything - from knowing nothing to having a good grasp of DirectX 8 with Visual Basic. It even goes beyond that and explains the logic needed to create 3D geometry and animation. There is a fully documented sample program too! And a glossary of terms - not just DirectX terms - but general programming and 3D mathematics too! The best DirectX 8 tutorial you are ever gonna get for free! Even people who already know DirectX should read this, as it goes onto more complex subjects. Especially people who have learnt DirectX 7 or earlier. Please remember to give me lots of feedback and votes so I know how to make future tutorials!
If you are a newbie to either DirectX8 or C++ then this is for you! It is a simple and fully commented program which uses DirectX8 to render a spinning triangle in fullscreen mode. This is my 1st C++/DX8 program and only my 3rd ever C++ program, so while I can ensure it's pretty simple, it might not be perfect, so please give me some help on improving it. If it's interesting/useful to you please vote for me because I worked very hard on this.
You'll love this! This is a cursor which interacts with a picturebox by lighting it up around the cursor position! Look at the screenshot. You can choose any picture you want, and the size and brightness of the torch can be chosen too! (Although larger torches run slowly). If you think this is cool/interesting/well programmed/original then please vote. The code is fully commented. Also look at my other submission of a transition special effect (look in best code of the month).
The most successful program of all time on Planet Source Code is RJSoft's textured 3D cube, it has had 176 excellent votes for it including my vote. People obviously were impressed by real time 3D texture mapping - it's the best graphics you can get. RJSoft's program produced these cool graphics using DirectX 7, it is a very well written program. But what if I were to tell you that it is possible to do this WITHOUT DIRECTX?! Yep, this is texture mapped 3D in PURE VB CODE! It doesn't use DirectX, no OpenGL, no DLL's, just label and image controls, and NO DRAWING API's - not even Windows ones. It doesn't use ANY API's in the main rendering loop!!! Yet it still has several rendering modes to choose from and runs at the following frame rates (on my 400Mhz PC). Corners Only - 135 FPS WireFrame - 120 FPS Outline - 110 FPS Flat Colour Polygons - 40 FPS Single Texture Mapped Polygons - 20 FPS Multiple Texture Mapped Polygons - 11 FPS That's FAST! I don't promise the graphics to be as good as RJSoft's program, but I do promise they're done in pure VB code. You can spin the cube on the x,y and z axis and stop it too. You can change the rendering mode by pressing the spacebar. So, 176 of you voted for RJSoft's program using DirectX, I hope you think this deserves a vote too. NOTE - for best performance run the compiled .exe (supplied) and close all other programs. This doubles the frame rates!
A WHOLE 3D PARADISE TO WALK AROUND IN REAL TIME!!! This is my first Direct3D program (apart from a plain cube). It demonstates lots of the basic stuff you need to use to make a Direct 3D program, such as : Z-buffering, texture mapping, matrices, polygon sorting and scrolling backgrounds. The 3D world includes a plane and a boat, and some trees. All this packed into a 264KB download! I made the trees using a trick I saw on the game Tombraider - they are 2D sprites which turn to face the camera! Even if this don't teach you much, you can at least have a laugh at the ridiculously low polygon count and cheap effects. NOTE : YOU NEED DIRECTX 7 INSTALLED TO RUN THIS! For the best performance, close all other programs and run "Si's 3D Garden.exe" (included). See "readme.html" for more information. Please COME BACK AND VOTE FOR THIS because I don't think anyone else has given up the source code for a whole 3D world to Planet Source Code!
aMAZEing shading is a 3D Doom-style game. It has nice depth cueing rendering on the polygons, plus some twinkling stars in the backround as a bonus. If you thought that 3D couldn't be achieved real-time in VB, think again. And if you thought this was good, wrong again. I have two other versions of the game (one uses DX7, the other is pure VB) both of which have cool perspective textured mapped graphics (pictures on the walls!) both available on the website. They are far better than this, go look at them. This was just a fun experiment with the original program, to keep those waiting for the final version [which will have floor, ceiling and monsters soon] happy for a while. I'd like to emphasise that this version [and the final one] does NOT use DirectX, or any DLL's or ocx's which were written in faster programming languages. This has so far and will continue to be achieved in pure VB code to prove that it's possible to make a 3D texture mapped game in pure VB code. NOTE : please DO NOT vote for this game (!), please vote for my original aMAZEing 3D game instead [although I have no objection if you'd like to vote for both!]