Visual C++ ??

[Evan]

HI,

Ive learned enough of VB to know making
a game in this language is too much work
and the games tend to run wrong.
What could I use the would be alittle
easier to program a game in?

[shub]

I don't think making a game in Visual C++ is going to be easy, while it will definately provide you with more flexibility and power to do it with. From what I've seen, if you just want to make a simple game, Java is an excellent language. It has all sorts of graphics support, and it will give you much more flexibility than VB. There's a great book on Java game programming, it's a little old (using java 1.0), but the techniques it shows are great. It's called "The Black Art of Java Game Programming." I don't remember the author off hand, but it should be easy to find.

[alex_read]

I would agree with that last one, NO language is easy to do games in, VC++ is a LOT harder and time consuming to learn than VB. If you want short "space invader" games, use VB or VJ++. If you are looking at serious game programming, get the Direct-x SDK from MS website.

What do you guys mean? Any project that's worth while is usually not easy. It takes months (and sometimes even years) to make a game. I strongly recmmend that you learn VC++ as it's is much better for games than VB.

[lumin]

Megatron is right..

Im currently in the process of re-coding a game created in VB into VC++ mainly becasue of its speed and secondly because of its DirectX support. (VB lacks good DirectX support even with DX7).

so if your gona make a game be sure to learn the basics of VC++ and the grabb a good DX book and start reading, I would also recomend reading some more advanced VC++ books while reading that DX book.

Well thats my thought.


-Lumin

[alex_read]

Mega, he asked for an easy one, do you think VC++ is worth learning for space invaders, pong & pacman?

Secondly, I got the DirectX SDK which goes into VB & VC++. Examples & code are matched for both (no obvious advantages for doing C++ / no more examples or bits which VB cannot do), is VC++ that much better for this (this part is not derogatory, I am enquiring here)?

Thankx,
Alex Read

[alex_read]

be interested if you could expand on the .

"(VB lacks good DirectX support even with DX7)."

part, see last mail with DX SDK 7a.

Thank you,
Alex Read

[lumin]

Well for once.. VB can probably do the same things in DX as VC++ can but while rendering that 3D dolphin swiming in VB you would have about 4-5 fps while in VC++ you would have atleast 40-45 fps, I would say that VC++ then got better support for DX than VB. (this was the results I got on my P-2 233 112 mb ram. and a G200 8mb. screen card)

and Also I have noticed that VB got limits on how many connections you can have and even if you manage to press it high (like 32767) you would still have many buggy moments.

Anyway making DX based games in DX6 was to much work.. you could probably have learned yourself VC++ in half the time you used reading the documentation on VB DX.
But with DX7 thing changed but still VB lacks the support that VC++ has. (and the speed)

anyway I have to agree that making games like pacman and snake and so on is to much work in VC++, but he might want to expand past that someday, and then its realy nice to have worked with VC++.


-Lumin

[noone]

Originally posted by shub
From what I've seen, if you just want to make a simple game, Java is an excellent language. It has all sorts of graphics support, and it will give you much more flexibility than VB. There's a great book on Java game programming, it's a little old (using java 1.0), but the techniques it shows are great. It's called "The Black Art of Java Game Programming." I don't remember the author off hand, but it should be easy to find.

Java is a good language for making games, its designed from the ground up to be OO and it has great built in graphics, threading and networking support, but believe me, nobody is going to be writing Java Quake anytime soon. It still has performance problems due to it being part interpretted for cross platform compatibility.
The book he was talking about can be found here:
http://www.itknowledge.com/reference...433/ewtoc.html
The book is excellent but you have to be able to convert from the old event model to the new one.

Originally posted by alex_read
Mega, he asked for an easy one, do you think VC++ is worth learning for space invaders, pong & pacman?

Secondly, I got the DirectX SDK which goes into VB & VC++. Examples & code are matched for both (no obvious advantages for doing C++ / no more examples or bits which VB cannot do), is VC++ that much better for this (this part is not derogatory, I am enquiring here)?

Thankx,
Alex Read

Sure DirectX can do things in VB, but it can also do the same thing in C++, except it's much faster. Secondly, whether it's for "Hello World" or Windows 2001, I still think C++ is worth learning because it will not only make your life easier now, but in your career as well. VB is great for database applications but as soon as you get into other things, the C++ verison is preferred.

I think you should learn C++ too!

C++ is one of the best languages out there, sure most internal(for the company) apps are made in VB, but damn near all commercial apps that are for sale are made in C++

[parksie]

Games like Worms2 use VB and C++ - VB for the interface and windows stuff, and C++ for the actual game.

[PsyVision]

How do you use DX in VCc++, i got the SDK but i cannot get it to work, in vb i know you add reference to it to use it but in VC++ do u use a header file or a lib ??????

[HarryW]

In the SDK documentation it tells you the header files to add to a C++ DirectX project.

[alex_read]

Thank you for the replies all!

Alex Read

[shub]

I agree that C++ is probably the all-around best to make a good game with. It just will take a lot of time and effort to do it in. Don't get me wrong I love C++ and have done much coding in it myself. I was just suggesting java as a good language to get started on game programming.

Once you have the concepts of what a game really needs to do, then you can expand that knowledge to more complicated, and more powerful languages.

Originally posted by PsyVision
How do you use DX in VCc++, i got the SDK but i cannot get it to work, in vb i know you add reference to it to use it but in VC++ do u use a header file or a lib ??????

They are in a header file.

[thevbplace]

I strongly agree with megatron - i'm learning vc++6 and i've found that making a simple game is VERY time-consuming - eg. label1.caption = "sample" becomes
GetDlgItem(IDC_LABEL1)->SetWindowText("sample");
, however it is about 10000000000 times faster... and you can nearly always manage to understand the error messages... my projects have never had a serious error. the worst has been that i forgot a semi-colon!

If U R learning VC++, a good forum(better than this!) is at
codeguru.com

RMUK2k

------------------------
k7500
128mb ram
12x dvd
19" moniter
*****VC++6*****

[thevbplace]

Best Post a question at codeguru.com. You ALLWAYS get an answer if you put the subject in ******test******

U get full source code from the other users too. U allways get up-to-date code coz there r 100s of users in the forum... you get an answer within a minute... or however long it takes for a boffin 2 write the answer.

Just wanted to say, that.. ofcourse u're going to get 2 to 4 frames per second if u're running the program from VB. If you compile it.. it's a lot better and faster. Oh and.. uhh one more thing.. compiling it would help, and uhh checking and optamizing the compiler option will also make it considerably faster.