Help pls..I am simple

Hey ppl, can u all give me some help, as I would like to develope a game in vb using directX 7, but where do i learn it, and how do I start? Are there any really good tutorials on the net to advise me on how to start DirectX 7 programming for vb, or are there any really good books? I know the basics stuff like drawing to the back layer and then displaying it (double buffering), but it is getting started on the project. I want to make a side scrolling game, I have an idea, it is just to implement it, simple sprites and simple graphics to start. All information would be excellent, thanks :D

Try http://www.cason.addr.com

Thanks Megatron, but there is hardly anything on the site. Is there anything better than can show me some practical examples and tell me more?

DirectDraw is really hard at the start. I suggest locking yourself in the computer room, printing out all of the ddraw examples (beginner and intermediate) and experimenting. That's how I learned it. I guess what you need to do for a side scroller is make a UDT something like this:

Code:

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Public Type Platform
  DDSurf as DirectDrawSurface7
  DDSD as DDSURFACEDESC2
  Position as RECT
  Top as integer
  Left as integer
End Type

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Sounds to me that this isnt even a graphics question. I suggest reading some tutorials on game design. Once you got the basics of the programming the major road block in making an application is, as you say, where to start and how to go about it... The programming you learn as you need it.
I personally learned DX when I made a small game and realised that BitBlt just wasnt fast enough. Once I read a few tutorials on the basics of DX the programming was easy, it was the concepts, algorithms, etc, that was the REAL difficult part...

Hope that helps.

Quote:

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Originally posted by Mag-Net
Thanks Megatron, but there is hardly anything on the site. Is there anything better than can show me some practical examples and tell me more?

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What do you mean there's nothing on there? Go to the tutorials section and you'll find lots of them. If you want other links, click on the VB Game Dev section and it will bring up 8 links to diferent sites.

If you click on the Discussion section, it will bring you to a forum similar to this where you can ask questions.

Err Megatron, do you have to view that site in Netscape or somthing as in IE, there are just 3 links, 1 an email address, the 2nd is a link to download IE, and the 3rd is to read an overview of directX7, and that page has one link to the microsoft site.

There are meant to be 5 pictures at the top, which are broken, and with no link, so is that where the links are meant to be?

i just read the source, and them broken pictures are in fact java applets that are not loading