Results for "Author: simon price"

Kewl Jewels is a game similar to, but ALOT better than, Tetris. I decided to make a game that takes brains rather than joystick abuse, so read the 'readme' file because it's only fun if you know the rules. But, once you get it, it's the most addictive game I've ever made! Challenges you brain, requires quick, descisive thinking and it's really annoying when you lose! The idea is to make jewels disappear by aligning them in rows of 3 or more similar colours. Often, a 'chain reaction' occurs and you bring the whole tower down, which is really cool (or kewl!). This game shows lots of recursive algorithms and quadratic scoring methods meaning that you get rewarded tons more for bigger reactions. Also shows of a bit of simple BitBlt and Sound FX. If you find this game addictive, please vote. If you can honestly say that you only had just one go, then don't bother voting but I bet you can't play this just once!

COOL SPECAIL EFFECT - SEE IT TO BELIEVE IT! This is a cool transition effect. There is a scroll bar to adjust the quality/speed of the effect. You can choose your own pictures for the effect too. I've seen a load of special effects ideas on PSC and so I thought of a different idea for a change (since I had seen alot of similar ideas there). I saw that DirectX can do something called alpha-blending and I wondered if it were possible to do it WITHOUT DirectX at a sensible speed in real time. Well, it is! - but (there's always a catch) to do it fast I had to make loads of memory buffers and look-up tables and so it takes 1.44 MB RAM, but that's no problem for most computers. The code is totally, fully commented, so anyone can understand it. Remember to vote for this if you think it's cool/original/well programmed/helpful (ofcourse I reckon it's all four!).

DX Snakes is my third game in a row of my DX series. Like the other two, it was made in just one day! If you liked the other two then get this one. If you haven't seen the others then get them as well! In DX snakes, you have to control a snake to eat apple without crashing. But if you eat apples, you get longer and so your more likely to crash - just like the game you see on mobile phones. The graphics once again are ultra slick - my 400Mhz PC is shifting that snake at 91 frames per second!!! So, even a slow PC should manage 30 FPS or more (the game prints the FPS to the debug window). You can select the difficulty level (1-9) of the game based on your skill and the speed of your PC. I recommend setting the difficulty to 3 to start with. The gameplay is very fast and it is very annoying when you lose (that's a good thing, because whilst you're not losing it's very tense!). Just like games should be. And when it's driven you mad because you crashed just as you were collecting your 100th apple, please don't break your PC because I'd like to come back and give feedback and/or vote for me. WARNING : THIS GAME REQUIRES DIRECTX 7 TO RUN!

Here's just a few special effects which I have thought of to do with a picture because I've seen an interest in the subject at PSC (laser effects - whoever first thought of it well done). With this code you can make any picture wave like a flag and animate it to flip as if it were a 2D piece of card being turned over. Both these effects can be applied horizontally or vertically. There is also a bonus zoom effect thrown in there. All effects can have the speed adjusted for different tastes/PC's.

Direct X-Files is a really cheap game I made very quickly, mainly because I downloaded the X-files theme tune and I felt that I needed to find a use for it so I made this X-files game in a few hours (so don't expect anything amazing). Alot of the code has been re-used from my old DirectX-games. However, if you are new to DirectX, I think that you will find the code very useful as it demonstates the basics of DirectDraw and some really basic DirectMusic. If you are not new to DirectX the code is still interesting because it uses the Sine function to make UFO's fly in wavy line and it also does a cool lightning effect from the lone cloud which you are supposed to dodge. The aim of the game is to shoot at the UFO's. Even if you don't learn from the code, download it anyway just for a laugh. The game is probably far too easy so if you get bored just walk under a cloud just as it is about to stike lightning and watch your skeleton light up as you cry out about how your burning to death (that means the game has sound FX too!). If you learn from or laughed at this game that please vote to show your appreciation of my efforts. THIS GAME REQUIRES DIRECTX 7. I take no responability if it crashes especially since the DirectMusic part has no error handling.

RARE! Look @ the screenshot NOW. These are actual screenshots of the in game graphics - in LOW resolution so that this page didn't take forever to download!!! It IS possible to make a 3D, lighted, perpective texture mapped game in VB! And this game does NOT use any C++ DLL's (like I see some others do), does NOT use any special controls apart from a few plain old pictureboxes. It does NOT use DirectX or OpenGL. Yet the game still runs fast enough on my 400Mhz PC with huge 3D textured levels when it was written in pure VB code! Has this ever been done before? If it has - I haven't seen it! At least one of the techniques used here is totally original and invented by me. Then download includes ten levels ranging from small to huge, plus you can draw your own in any paint program!!! This is so simple and powerful code YOU WILL BE BLOWN AWAY. This all started last month when one of my friends said that a 3D game in VB was not possible so I spent a long time racking my brains and then 2 weeks programming. These are the results so far, and the game will get better. PLEASE SHOW THAT THESE EFFORTS ARE APPRECIATED. If this code is helpful, well done or simply aMAZEing then please vote for me. Feedback is also welcome but please do not complain that it is too slow - what do you expect? How many other games have graphics like this? It would be an achievement if it ran at 1 frame per second! Other people send in a boring old 3D cube, I give you a whole 3D textured level with two choices of graphical style - realistic or surreal. Enjoy, and when this game is faster, has enemies and guns, and looks just like Doom, I'll send in the finished game.

Mod_DX7.bas is a module of simple functions to make DirectX programming easier. Included is an example program which uses the module. All it does is bounce a ball over a background but it does it at a rather slick 89 frames per second (on my 400Mhz PC) and it prints the frame rate every second to the debug window for you to see. This is my first ever DirectX program so it will be useful for newbies to DirectX 7 (like me). I have since used this module to create my most graphically advanced game - aMAZEing 3D - to run in full 3D lighted textures at fast frame rates! Go look at my other submissions to see that. If this code is helpful, please vote for it.

DX pong is rather neat version of the classic game Pong. It uses DirectX 7 and so you must have that installed on your computer to play. The graphics are detailed smooth - they run at over 50 frames per second on my 400Mhz PC. Cheesy sound effects are included too, but the best thing about this game is the computer's intelligence. Rather than blindly chasing tha ball (like I've seen many other pong games do), it predicts the path of the ball (even if it is going to bounce off several walls) and makes a decision that is not always perfect. The way the computer moves looks like a human player and so it is difficult but not impossible to beat. Have fun, and then come back and vote for me. I usually provide a screenshot, but I don't know how to do that for Direct X games - could someone tell me? Thanks.

Invasion is an excellent example of how to make really cool, explosive, fast graphics in your games. UFO's fly down the screen and your job is to stop them from getting to the bottom. Luckily, I've armed you with a big machine gun which fires at 20 rounds pers second! This screenshot cannot begin to describe to total mayhem of bullets and explosions - this game is very fast... If you enjoy of learn from this, a vote it return is not too much to ask!

Yet another clone of the classic game BreakOut... but this one's a little cleverer than most - it has chain reaction explosions, multiple balls to juggle plus fair graphics + sound.

A pacman style game from isometric view! Camera follows the player! A very clever AI system that uses the ghosts 'line of sight' so that they really do 'see' you - and an exclamation mark appears on thier head when they do! Sound FX and level editor included - 30 different styles of level (that's a fair bit of artwork for just me!). Graphics run at a fair frame rate and it's all done w/o Direct-X or other controls!!!

*- UPDATED -* NOW INCLUDES UFO's!!! I've seen lots of boring screen savers around that have a few stars whizzing by. But they weren't true 3D, just pixels moving outwards. So I've written a program which randomly creates galaxies and you have complete freedom of flight - you can control the speed, pitch, roll and turning of your spacecraft. Plus there is even the option of increasing / decreasing galaxy density for better / worse / faster / slower graphics.

Erm, I don't really know what I was trying to do here. Maybe you could make it into a screensaver. It looks like you're going down a tunnel. Wierd. Only 3KB.

You can spin around a 3D cube in realtime at fast frame rates (I can get 67 fps on my 400Mhz PC) in one of 3 rendering modes : wireframe, filled polygons, lighted/shaded polygons. VERY short and simple code, good intro to 3D.

I made this today for a laugh, 4 snakes have to be the last snake squirming in a fight to the death. The fun bit is that you can change, save and load different AI settings to change the behaviour of the computer controlled snakes. 0,1 or 2 human players allowed. I also have a snake game with better graphics on the site. If you like this, please remember to come back and vote!

I've never seen a decent racing game in VB - until now! This racing game has fast, detailed graphics and good AI. AI? Yes, there are opponent cars!!! AND there is a course editor so that you can design and save your own courses - then teach the computer controlled cars to race on it! Accurate collision detection and smooth handling. If you enjoy or learn from this game, then a vote in return would take alot less time and effort than what I put into this game!

This is an introdunction to the art of masking. It shows you how to use BitBlt and masks to create a sprite over a background.

CHECK THIS OUT! This is a really cool effect. Stand in the middle of a 3D world and use the mouse to rotate the camera around. All running at over 60 frames per second!!! The pictures look beautiful (thanks to Craig Nisbet - it's his artwork, but my programming). How is such a high res 3D image made to run at 60 FPS in VB? Well, I cheated ofcourse! I just used a cylinder and wrapped and image round it, then put the camera in the centre of this cylinder. But the effect looks just the same as if I were using the best quality 3D graphics using thousands of polys! You really can't see the difference. Plus, like my last submission it has the advantage of compression - why use a huge 3D file when you can just use a jpeg? This demo also features both hardware and software rendering, (BTW software = very slow) and adjustable rendering quality. There will be many more features added but I won't be able to release the source code of the final version, sorry. I hope that you agree that this deserves a decent vote, if not then please tell me why not so I can improve the program. Enjoy!

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!