Results for "Author: simon price"

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.

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!]

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!).

This is my first ever C++ program, only download this if you are at the "Hello World" stage of C++ programming! It is for 2 players, the aim is to guess the opponents number. Since there is no validation or error handling yet, this sad program can easily crash or fall into an endless loop if someone types in an invalid number or a string. Well, it is my first game.

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!

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.

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

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!

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.

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!