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Hi!
I've just finished the 2nd release of my special effects module for bitblt-based games.
It features a whole load of new stuff, like look-up tables to make it faster and 18 special effects!
You can download the sample + source in the link below. And if you use it or have any question about it, e-mail me or post here ;)
This version works with a module, so it's a bit slow (about 60 FPS on my comp). Don't worry, I'm working on a faster DLL version :cool:
depending on the effect I'm using, I get between 85 and 110 FPS (normally about 90). And with 2 copies open, I get about 50 FPS.
This is all on a pentium 4 1GHZ with a $150 grapichs card :) :cool: ;)
Woah :)
:(
EXE: Object variable or With block variable not set
VBP: Subscript out of range in the SpecialBlt function
I got those errors too, but i just tried running it again and again and after my 3rd or 4th time it worked ...
Yeah, sorry, but I don't have a clue as to those errors. Everything seems to be fine, they're just not supposed to be there! It's got to be VB, because I didn't use any complex APIs... anyway, it works after the 2nd time you try it. Can anyone help me fixing this?...
Yeah, sorry, but I don't have a clue as to those errors. Everything seems to be fine, they're just not supposed to be there! It's got to be VB, because I didn't use any complex APIs... anyway, it works after the 2nd time you try it. Can anyone help me fixing this?...
BTW, what do you think of the effects? ;)
I've got here a new version... with a new effect.
All of the pics turn out at various shades of gray on my computer!
Even worse, it goes at 0.1 FPS!
(Celeron 533, 128MB PC133 SDRAM, S3 Savage4 PRO)
Help...!
What would be considered a good FPS for a VB game? An average? A bad?
33 and above - so good your eyes are in sync with the video
average - 20-25, good but your eyes will tell the difference
bad - below 15, video will be very jerky and not pleasurable.
good, that means that my RPG engine has a a good FPS ratting on my comp (pentium 4 1GHZ) The only bad part is that it will probly go down latter :(
I can boast a P4 1.4Ghz, and I got a 64Mb graphics, runs around 70Fps. It looks pretty good, but I hate graphics stuff hey. So much code for so little effects. AHhhh!!!!!!!
Hi Jotaf98
Cool Demo!
The error's arise because of the timer interval on your form. Set this to 500 and all will be ok. ( the timer kicked in before arrays
initialised)
BTW are these funtions open source? I have a project that could
use some of your code...
Regards
Jenk.
(Sorry, I tried to reply to this thread earlier but had some problems :( )
Thanks Jenk, I'd never though of that :D
I though that things in the Form_Load event ran before anything else! Maybe they left out some DoEvents or something in the middle of their code, because I don' have one :p
I'll fix it when I get home because right now I'm at school ;)
Yes, it's open source code. Do whatever you want with it! But if you use a big part of it or the whole module, you could put my name in it if you want... :p
Sastraxi: As to the grayscale images problem... it's not my program, because I used VB's LoadPicture :)
To test it out, try this in a new form:
(or whatever path to my JPGs you have)Code:
Private Sub Form_Load()
Form1.Picture = LoadPicture("C:\Downloaded Code Samples\Special Effects\Planet.jpg")
End Sub
Now, if the image appears grayscale on the form, it's either your VB version or your graphics card... I've heard of this kind of problems with people that had low settings. How much BPPs does your monitor have? Try to make it 16 bits or 24, that should work ;)
And Wak, I don't know if I mentioned it in the readme.txt, but you're supposed to delete the effects you don't need to speed up loading, and maybe resize the array so these lookup tables don't use up more memory than you can spend (the whole lot of 18 effects takes about 1mb, but that shouldn't be a problem for most 32 or 64mb graphics card :D ).
Excellent!
I've stuck it in my project - works a treat! BTW you could reduce
your blitting by 1 by setting autoredraw to false and doing a
me.refresh after blitting background + light. You wouldn't need a
back buffer blit then.
My project is called VBreeze, and is about making screensavers/games
or multimedia stuff with ease!
It's a form full of functions to do lots of hard api stuff for
you (wrapped in a single commands)
you can download an earlier ver of it(133A) at
www.geocities.com/finnerp
then follow the jenk links. scroll down to the bottom and pickup
the zip file. don't worry to much about the instructions to extract
it to - i've sorted that now!
I'll be realising ver 135 soon with your routine in. full credits
will be given!
cheers
Jenk.
Hehe, no need for big things, a small text in the "About..." section will do it ;)
Glad to see my functions help someone... 'till now you're only the second person to use them (at least that I know of!) :D
I know I could make it faster, but anyway, the FPS was already good enough (I think), so I used a backbuffer so it looks more like a game (that's what it was made for anyway... :) )
Jotaf, its definitely going into my Craft game ; as soon as my exams are over.
It is quite excellent !
Heh, thanks ;)
I also have exams, and they'll not stop until July, so I won't have much time to work on these functions :(
It's never been tested in a game with stuff that slow down the FPS, so if it goes too slow in your game, just tell me and I'll try to optimize it a bit :p
Sure thing.
And my last exam is on June 1st ; so wahahaha ;)
Heh, my last exam is only in June 21st... :(
So come june 2nd I'll start trying to wedge the effects into craft.
I'll get them in there somewhere :)
Ok. E-mail me when you're done, I'd like to see it ;)
It's not that hard to implement it. Just load the image and blt it with a different function. That's all :p
Yeah but I have to find an excuse to put the effects in :)
Oh yeah. You're right.
Here's a small list, but I'm sure you can expand it:
* Glass-like materials, like in space platforms: Translucency
* Explosions: Add (either the improved version or the old one that produces the same effects as in GTA2)
* Smoke: Subtract (same here)
* Lasers (probably Add again, since it's light)
* Lights: Add (again - you could use lights around capitol ships, or even something like 2 small flashlights in front of the player's ship for night missions)
* Sun effects: Add again :) (like coronas and all - camera effects)
* Wave-like weapons: one of the Weird Effects (they look quite cool, completely distorting everything that comes in their way ;) )
* BFGs: Add (most plasma-based weapons should have lots of light effects)
* Nebulas: Translucency or Subtract (you're gonna include them in your game, right?)
* Missile trails: Subtract (since it's smoke - a trail always looks good on any missile :p )
Ok, I think that's big enough... and they should suit any game genre I think ;)
Yeah I'm sure I'll be able to fit them in somewhere ;)
Just thought I'd give this one a bump ;)
BTW, I'm thinking about making a C++ DLL so it's faster
I had a look at your "cool" special effects. I'd say you could screw the lookuptable if you want speed, you can code much more efficient algoritms with pointer aritmetics than using arrays. Here's some alphablending samples i've coded up for you, i haven't tested them, i just wrote them here:
inline Alphablend50(unsigned char**source,unsigned char**target)
{**target=(*(*target)+++*(*source)++)\2;}
inline AlphablendX(unsigned char**source,unsigned char**target,float sourceindex,float targetindex)
{**target=(*(*target)++)*targetindex+(*(*source)++)*sourceindex;}
inline BlendAdd(unsigned char**source,unsigned char**target)
{**target=*(*target)+++*(*source)++;}
inline FadeBlack(unsigned char**target,float index)
{**target++*=*index;}
inline FadeWhite(unsigned char**target,float index)
{**target=255-(255-**target)*index;}
You really should learn c++ and experimenting with graphical stuff will be much more fun, you could end up writing winamp plugins ;) If you for some really odd reason want to have sin and cos in your graphical masterpieces, then go with a lookup table.
oops :o was meant to post in the other thread, but i guess it's the same topic ;) so nm heh
Ked as usual the happy optimistic guy that he is :)
Hehe, no problem :)
Anyway, thanks Kedaman, I'll try to learn C++. But why are you using all those asterisks? I tried making the DLL and the way I was thaught was MUCH different... :confused:
the unary prefix operator * (which you saw most of the time;) deferences a pointer. The binary * is the regular multiplication operator you know from vb :)
type* variablename declares a pointer to a type and
type** variablename declares a pointer to a pointer to a type etc...
=* binary assignment operator does the same as * but assigns the result to the left side value.
Well that's a lot of uses of the asterixes in C++, if you compare to vb, oh one moment, /* starts a comment block and */ ends it.
btw, i found that you can optimize Alphablend50 by using shift operators instead:
inline Alphablend50(unsigned char**source,unsigned char**target)
{**target>>=1;*(*target)+++=*(*source)++>>1;}
As to my *much* earlier problem, it appears as ONE shade of gray throughout the whole thing, different shades for different effects. 20x20 BMP 24bit colour, desktop 1600x1200 32 bit colour.
Well... hum... as to your problem... I have no idea why it's happening. It should work just fine; all I used was GetPixel and SetPixel! How could THAT not work?! :)
Maybe you could post a screenshot here (there may be a pattern in it or something).
And Kedaman, you're making me even more confused :)
No one ever explained that bit-shift thing to me :(
knowledge is of course power, but actually it's just illusionary, real power is confusion :p
Bit shifting is more or less low level programming, since data is stored binary but also in chunks of 8 bits and you can't access specifical bits with flexibility, in vb you can simulate bitshifting by dividing or multiplying with powers of the radix, but those operations are slow and inefficient, say multiplying
00010111010 with 100 makes
01011101000
you notice that the bits has just shifted left 2 positions when you multiply with 2^2=4. The << operator does this shifting as well except that the compiled machine code for it is a single instruction to the processor, which is much more efficient than multiplication. The shift operators in c++ are
a>>b returns a shifted b steps to the right
a<<b returns a shifted b steps to the left
a>>=b assigns a and returns a shifted b steps to the right
a<<=b assigns a and returns a shifted b steps to the left
so bitshifting can be efficient for radix power multiplications but also for data compression. For instance you can have 1-bit booleans and 4bit-nibbles or any user length variable stored together in a long, then to access specific parts, you shift right, AND to a bitmask. To assign you AND with another inverted bitmask, shift left and OR. Usually it's better to assign the whole long.
Heh, thanks Kedaman :)
Where did you learn all that? ;)
(Mis)use... =)
Z.
I'm Kedaman (7 of 9-style)
7 of 9 style 'eh ked ?
Im starting to like you a whole lot more now :)
since when did you start to dislike me? btw, i don't look like 7 of 9 if that's what you thought :pQuote:
Originally posted by plenderj
7 of 9 style 'eh ked ?
Im starting to like you a whole lot more now :)
I don't quite remeber when i learned that at all jotaf, but thats something you get to know whenever you start learning c++, only thing is that i knew it a lot earlier.
Ok, OK!!! I just wanna learn C++, where did you learn it? :D
there's tutorials everywhere if you search for them, Sam's teach yourself c++ in 21 days is good enough.
I know, but they're either too "Microsoft-styled" (eg.: you need to keep checking the dictionaire for those weird words that are only used in speeches :) ) or they're too complex, like for C programmers or something.
I need one that is for people that have some experience in VB :p
Sorry, but I just found that many people here are looking for these effects and I'm sure they won't find this in the second page :D
no but there's things called "links" if i remember the word correctly,im,really,sorry,but,i,have,to,use,comma,since,my,space,needs,600kilonewton,to,press,down:m ad:,anyway,sams,teach,yourself,c++,in21,days,was,easy,enough,for,me,to,read;),if,you,like,oop,then,y ou'll,certainly,going,to,love,it!
Thanks kedaman, but I've looked for C++ books before and they all look like the resources MS "provides" in their website (unreadable for people like me with an extremely limited vocabulary in english :) )
Thanks for the idea, I'm gonna put a link in my signature (how could I forget that? :rolleyes: )
And... huh... buy a new keyboard ;)
Jotaf ... Thanks for posting the information about your effects routines on the Nexus news site.
Not only do the routines look good -- but you introduced me to VBworld (and vbforums) ... can't believe I didn't know about this place. I spend most of my posting time at VBexplorer & Lucky's VB Gaming site ... and, check the news at the Nexus.
I'm downloading your effects modules, though I don't know when I'll make use of them. I'm thinking the API-based one will come in handy more quickly than the DX ones -- just based upon my current projects.
Again -- just wanted to say "thanks" and "good work" ...
-Bryk
You're welcome ;)
I don't have a web site, so I have to post my projects here :)
The only problem is that there isn't as many people here as there is in The Nexus, so I had to post it there too :p