Results for "Author: simon price"
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.
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!
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 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.
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 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!
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 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.
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!
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
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.
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!!!
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!
*- 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.
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.
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!