Results for "Author: fosters"

Nothing pushing the limits of VB, but when developing games/apps and using GetAsyncKeyState, do you ever go, "Uhmm, what the hell is left arrow again?!". here you are. run this app, press the key (or combo) and there it is! I think this is more of a useful tool than a coding extravaganza, so please vote/comment accordingly. You never know, while you're writing your 1st class game, you may even use this tool! :-)

Call me sad, but I wanted a moving starfield with fading in text for my splash screen. Using bitBlt, masking and frame buffering, it can easily be done looking professional and flicker free! (The *dynamic* masking of the text enables the stars to pass behind the gaps in the text) If you type in new text it'll fade it back in from black. Remember it doesn't have to be a starfield or text, but it shows how BitBlt'ng everything to a buffer first really makes a difference when producing flicker free gfx. Please comment and vote.

This app will collect your system information, save it to a bitmap and then set your desktop wallpaper to the system info bitmap. This is an excellent tool for support centres to aid with information gathering when a client PC and/or application is not behaving. There's a lot of code here: Collect CPU info Get IP Address (no winsock) Capture the screen Save a bitmap Set the desktop wallpaper bitmap Set the desktop wallpaper tiling off Refresh the desktop All this code is extractable for your own uses. This app requires GetCPU.dll. I have included it in the zip (renamed to GetCPU.txt - I wonder if PSC will allow it - simply rename it from txt to dll and place it in c:\windows or winnt\system32\). Please vote and comment.

I've just got a Sharp GX20 mobile phone and it's an ar$e loading pics into PSP to resize and crop them. Okay, I didn't *need* to write this, but it was a good challenge for me. Load up your jpgs and resize them and crop select areas to your hearts content and save them. hope you enjoy.

Watch the asteroid ships obliterate themselves as they charge on their course, only to be deflected by the edge of the screen. Hope you enjoy. Mike.

*** Stage 2 - starting to look like a game now. enemies and collision detection next, followed by the alien abduction/rescue code *** This is my current lunchtime project - a remake of the classic defender. This is the first stage and there's a lot more to go. So why put the code up already? Well this is an open source code site and the very simple way I've coded this makes it a very useful starting point for vb and graphics (use of APIs for drawing lines, pixels, sprite animation against a ticker whilst creating a whole image for frame buffering to screen). At this stage there is enough in here to teach you how to create your own scrolling shooter without having to start from scratch. Votes are obviously appreciated, but I just love sharing code. enjoy and I hope if you use this project as a seed, post it on PSC. Cheers, Fosters.

Try to clear the tiles, by clicking on tiles that have the same coloured neighbour. the more tiles you clear at once the higher your score (if you can beat 1717, send me a screen shot!). All bitblt and masking - a great learning example. Don't play this in an office - it severely reduces productivity!!!!! **** Remember to change the INI file location to a central network directory for multiple users - in the .bas module!! ***** vote if you're addicted!! :-D

This is my current lunchtime project - a remake of the classic defender. This is the first stage and there's a lot more to go. So why put the code up already? Well this is an open source code site and the very simple way I've coded this makes it a very useful starting point for vb and graphics (use of APIs for drawing lines, pixels, sprite animation against a ticker whilst creating a whole image for frame buffering to screen). At this stage there is enough in here to teach you how to create your own scrolling shooter without having to start from scratch. Votes are obviously appreciated, but I just love sharing code. enjoy and I hope if you use this project as a seed, post it on PSC. Cheers, Fosters.

Remember the 'Cheers' logo where the hi lite skips left to right across the text and you get a little animated star on the text - well this is like that - flicker free and smooth! Good gfx techniques here using frame buffering, TextOut/SetTextColor to a picture, BitBlt and GDIAlphaBlend.

Nice little graphic for activating when your application is busy. Uses alphablend, gdialphablend and bitblt. background doesn't have to be black and you can use a different image too.

Using Windows enumeration, this app collects all the running applications, screen scrapes them into thumbnails. Then click on the thumbnail to switch to the application. Only works on XP so far (am working on it!). There's a lot of window API work in here and as always a working example is a great tutorial. enjoy.

Still on my gdi alphablend bandwagon. this screensaver drops twisting 3d rendered spiral pasta shapes down the screen. Enjoy

Physical and virtual memory monitor and CPU monitor. I've only catered for 1 cpu, but actually get the metrics for all CPUs (check ReturnCPUPercent(x) up to m_lCPUs). Sits conveniently on top of the desktop pretty unobtrusively too. if you like the progress bar, you can cut and paste the function into your own code. hope u find it useful.

A big update of my previous version. as optimised as I can make it. API use ot bitblt, stretchblt, textout, gettickcount, rectangle, etc. Already had excellent reviews from visualbasicextreme.com, and hoped you all would like this too. each effect can be turned off through 'Settings' on Display>Screensaver. Font is part of the zip. Hope you all like :-))

The marquee screensaver is superb... but it doesn't do enough!! This version will display free format text like before, but also other things, like your machine name, ip address (no ocx!) or all your running tasks. Screens are good enough these days not to really require a comprehensively blanking screensaver, so I've added a transparent option too. There's lots of code here, all functionalised: Get IP address, Hostname, running processes, shrink screen to fit in Display properties window and bitblt of course. It seems a little cheaty, but I've allowed you to set the timer interval and maximum objects speed to tune to your own system. votes and comments always welcome. :-)

Fully functional desktop news ticker supplying the BBC headlines... that doesn't take up 5% of your screen space [sigh]. By fully functional, it means click on the news item and it loads the news page. right click on the ticker to unload.

A binary clock! on your desktop! remembers where you put it and stays on top! best of all, it's different!!!

This application collects a few bits of system information, the time and date and puts them onto a transparent form to sit on your desk. dbl-click to end the app, it remembers where you left it. I'm after a few suggestions on how to enhance it (what other information to show?). There's a ton of code I've written here - all by me. comments and votes all welcome. Cheers Fosters

There are several registry locations that applications can be started from before the desktop is presented. They are 'detectable' and this application will help you locate them and their owner companies. Run this regularly and familiarise yourself with what does start up in your machine. pretty soon, you'll very quickly recognise when a new thing appears - it could be a virus!!

Want to plot 3d points on the screen? this code will enable you to do this! I did not write the original code that calculates the x,y co'ord from x,y,z co'ordinates, but I compiled it into an easy to use (cut 'n paste) form and added a few examples of what you can do. lines wouldn't be a problem either, just write a wrapper function to do the job! Please vote! (I didn't do the trig, but hey, it's just math ;-) and I did the rest!)