Development Questions II

This post is a follow-up post to my first post.

I purchased a copy of Visual Studio 2005--business expense--to try my hand on porting my existing game forward so I could start my experiment with DirectX. However, this journey has led me into more murky waters. Now, I'm dealing with the following issues:

Tutorials
I'm running into problems with online tutorials not working in 2005. It appears that there are just enough differences between .Net Framework 1.1 (version 7?) and .Net Framework 2.0 (version 8?) that many tutorials don't seem to work. You can download the source. Visual Studio's conversion wizard will handle some of the source, but there is usually always at least one thing wrong--mostly tied to method calls that don't belong to that particular class. Since I'm trying to cut my teeth in these languages, I'm trying to figure out if I'm missing someone syntax-wise, library/reference-wise, or...? This question leads me into the next section.

DirectX
What version of DirectX should I try and will work with the 2005 languages (version 8?)? I have a copy of DX 7.0a, 8.1, and 9.0c (latest?). Since I don't have any foreknowledge of DX, I've been trying to use online tutorials--including Jacob Roman's stuff--and I don't know if things are blowing up because I don't have DX setup properly or the conversion wizard didn't handle it properly. Also, which version should I try to be bashing on my head? Indie Game Dev sites--along with a few sites visited by the Pros--seem to suggest sticking with DX 7 or 8 because of its stability and widest coverage. There is some advanced stuff in DX 9 that aren't widely installed in a given user base (Shaders especially). For what my game does/need--namely 2D graphics, tile engine, input, and sound for now--DX 7 would be fine, but getting it to work with 2005/Framework 2.0 is rather murky too. They would need to download install Framework 2.0 on top of my game to get it work to be the first on the list. These questions lead me into my final area.

Engines
Should I just say "Screw it! :mad:" and invest time/energy into an existing technology/game engine and go with it from there. I would keep VS 2005 for learning C# and VB.Net for business environment and future contracts, but not for my hobby development. I've spent all weekend looking into total packages like BlitzMax, Torque Game Builder, SpriteCraft among others. There are also frameworks I could try like PopCap's framework, PTK, Haaf, and pyGame, but these sources seem to relay heavily on C++. I've also run into problems getting code that is easy to use in 2005. It appears that the majority of the Big Dogs are giving 2005 time to get on the market and time for the engine makers to roll out, but that takes time and energy that the Big Dogs would rather not use on infrastructure and focus on their revenue areas--game development.

Ending
TGB looks good & sounds good, but for what I want, it is helluva overkill. It is cheap, but its learning curve is "Whoa!" sharp. VERGE is primarily a (SNES) RPG engine that could work, but it isn't really geared towards strategy development from what I can see in its list of tech demos. BlitzMax could definitely work--haven't touched it since the Blitz2D days--but I'm looking at dropping additional cash to get it to do what I was doing in VB 6.0 before I started hitting bumps.

Anyone mind investing some time and energy to help me ensure I'm asking the right questions and evaluating the right options?

Disclaimer: I don't claim to be a pro game programmer, nor do I make games on a daily basis, I'm 17 years old, and I'm attending a Game Programming school next year, entering straight into the second year of the Diploma. Theres a bit of a foreword, decide whether to continue on reading what I have to say now :p

Tutorials:
The main reason for that, is because people are slack. Seriously, there aren't many programmers out there who update their tutorials from one framework to the next, its quite horrible. Your best bet is to Google tutorials + " 2.0" :eek:

DirectX:
Well, this will contradict what I'll say below, but, I'd go with DX7 for now. I googled once to get it working with C++ Express 2005...not sure where it was, it was a long while ago now. Again, Google is your best bet :eek:

Engines:
Personally, I would. One link:

http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/

One of, if not, the best open source 3D engine out there. Its so easy to use. Its meant to be used with C++, but there is also now support for .NET (meaning it can be used from C++, C#, or VB.NET). Part of the 3D package is support for 2D stuff aswell, so those APIs are your best bet.

It also comes with some TechDemos, obviously, but only 2 or 3 2D ones since the last time I used Irrlicht (probably about beta 0.5 - its now at 1.2).

Ending:
To sum up, I really think you should ditch the idea of making an engine now, and going for one thats good. Irrlicht, if you read through it enough, is absolutely amazing. The amount of stuff he's thrown into the engine is amazing...mostly from a 3D point of view. It's also open source, so if you really wanted to add something that wasn't there, you could put a bit of C++ into it too..

I'm looking to write a 2D engine in C#, once I have these few jobs I have to do over and done with (most likely, next year). So if you want to combine our efforts into that, I'd be more than happy too. My problem, and lack of motivation though, is available graphics with which to test an engine with...which is why the VB6 engine I made a long time ago never really went anywhere after some tests with bitmaps I made in Paint :eek:

chem

Need more cN input. :cool:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by chemicalNova

Disclaimer: I don't claim to be a pro game programmer, nor do I make games on a daily basis, I'm 17 years old, and I'm attending a Game Programming school next year, entering straight into the second year of the Diploma. Theres a bit of a foreword, decide whether to continue on reading what I have to say now

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Okay. You've gotten your "Buyer Beware" statement out of the way.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by chemicalNova

I'm looking to write a 2D engine in C#, once I have these few jobs I have to do over and done with (most likely, next year). So if you want to combine our efforts into that, I'd be more than happy too. My problem, and lack of motivation though, is available graphics with which to test an engine with...which is why the VB6 engine I made a long time ago never really went anywhere after some tests with bitmaps I made in Paint

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I'm game. I know it may be reinventing the re-invented wheel, but I'm still trying to parlay my dated Java and C++ knowledge into C# with mixed results--besides rewriting number guessing games and other trinkets. However, I really do think that spending the time and energy creating new software in VB 6.0 is setting my project up to fail, and I guess I might as well take the plunge in '07 until I'm drowning in .NET-specific work and workarounds. :sick:

Why would someone want to code VB.Net when you have C#, and they are getting rather replaceable--like crossing code language in module usage?

Hello!!!

I'm running www.osgamer.org and i'm looking for someone who would like to write review for Irrlicht Engine, and some story about usage in Vb.NET, just your observations and experiances

If you have time and would like to support our new Open Source Gaming Portal, please let me know: [email protected]

Best regards!