Results for "Author: simon price"

*- 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.

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'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!

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!).

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!

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.

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!

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.

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.

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!]

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.