How to clear only the ship(A newbie at game programming)Plz help

Hello Every1,
I'm have just started game programming & have a small doubt. I want to make a small game just like arkanoid. I have made a procedure called DrawGameArea() which draws the border & the scoring, lives & hint area. Now to move the paddle i have to clear the screen everytime. So when drawing the paddle, i have to call the DrawGameArea() procedure also to draw the game area. Is there a way so that i have to clear only the paddle & the rest of the screen remains the same. Or any other way of doing this stuff. I'm pretty much a newbie at game programming so thought maybe some1 can help on this. Thanx in advance.

Are you using BitBlt or DX or what???

In general you WANT to clear the screen each frame.

Z.

But if the background don't move, you can only Blt the size of what is moving at the point it was before it moved, and then Blt the picture to where oyu want to move it. In a game with no scrooling background, this will improve speed a lot...

Only in API, not in DirectX.

Quote:

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Originally posted by CornedBee
Only in API, not in DirectX.

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What do you mean...not improve speed or not possible in DX???

Not improve speed - not much at least.

I have never tested the speed improvement, but I think it is a reason for the DX SDK to have an example on how to do it, and J. Harbour to have an example in his book on how to do it....but I have not tested it so I can't tell how much inprovment....

I believe the improvement is not worth the additional work - to test which areas are invalidated and such. The whole concept is probably only usable for simple games (not any 3d games due to the techniques used) without too much extra work, and for those games the speed gain is irrelevant.

No....not 3D games. I'm talking about 2D games with a non scrolling background. That is what it is used for....

draw a balck(background color) bar where your bar was previously and draw the white one at the new place. there, so simple !

Quote:

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Originally posted by NoteMe
No....not 3D games. I'm talking about 2D games with a non scrolling background. That is what it is used for....

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I'm currently writing such a game in C#. I still repaint everything everytime simply because it's easier. Such a game does not need the speed gain you have.

maybe he's doing something much more resource extensive like a physics engine or hi-fi collissions and he wants toinch every single cpu cycle.

Yeah, but in that kind of game you can't even place that many objects if you use a good collision algorithm.
Physics modelling doesn't take that many cycles.
AI might be an issue, yes.

But if the card supports hardware blitting (nearly all modern cards do) then you might use more CPU cycles determining what to redraw than actually redrawing everything. Hardware blitting can be in parrallel with other calculations.

true but there are physics engines that could clog your fps right to their very roots. like karma of course, in ut 2003, i get 5 fps on my 32 mb card if i use full physics details with 5 bots. aargh !!

And then, we ARE assuming VB here, and if you want every CPU cycle, you arent using VB ;)

Z.

true :(:o:):D

not(False) :D

(!false)

!0

-4

Z.

I have to admitt I couldn't understand the logic befind the last one, so I think the VBForums compiler got an error, and terminated this thread...;)

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Originally posted by NoteMe
I have to admitt I couldn't understand the logic befind the last one, so I think the VBForums compiler got an error, and terminated this thread...;)

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What, the -4? Non-Zero == true, Zero == false.

Z.

Sorry for wasting the topic, people ... Let's get back to the last usefull post :)

Quote:

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Originally posted by Zaei
And then, we ARE assuming VB here, and if you want every CPU cycle, you arent using VB ;)

Z.

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This was the last real post. And it is true. But you can always, say that. Vb is to slow...so why not use C++...C++ is too slow, so why not use ASM, ASM is too slow, why not make a chip set from scratch.....;)

why not make bubble memory chambers of own, or maybe nanoelectronics (!bad)

Anyway, I think the standard spectrum analyzer plugin of winamp erases only the parts of the screen that might have changed (= the wave part, the spectrum part and every second the song title part)

Heh, his own thread and tough coder only posted to start it.

LOL

Hey guys, u r all off the track a bit. Cmon, help me out. Well, i'm using only BitBlt to achieve this. can u guys help...

clear the paddle only?
what about the bouncing ball and the blocks that you have to hit?
they need to be redrawn as well...

you said you only want to clear and redraw the paddle

just a thought...
have 3 pictureboxes:
×----MAIN: will be the final output
x----BG: will contain the background HDC(so you dont redraw)
X----backbuffer: copy BG to this 1rst, then the paddle & other
things that need to be animated(ball, blocks) and after everything
is drawn here, Bitblt everything to MAIN

probably this will make it slower since you are adding extra
pictureboxes...
______
another option would be to copy the background area where you
are going to put the paddle, and store it somewhere along with
it's X and Y position where it was taken from in the picturebox...
then bitblt the paddle on that area, to erase it, just copy the
area that you had stored before and put it back to it's X & Y
position.

I dont know if I explained that last one good, or I left out anything, well, :o ::yawn::, feeling sleepy but not gonna go to
sleep, laters :confused: