Congratulations to our VB Guru winner for May 2013! To find all the competitors for May (and more information about this monthly contest), see the Wiki article: TechNet Guru Awards, May 2013.
Here are our three winners:
 | Visual Basic Technical Guru - May 2013 |
| Reed Kimble | How to Create Video Games in VB.Net (Windows Forms) |
|
| Paul Ishak | How to convert a 32bit integer into a color |
|
| Paul Ishak | Virtual memory in Visual Basic.Net |
|
Here are excerpts from the article:
How to Create Video Games in VB.Net (Windows Forms)
I realize that this is a very popular subject, especially amongst budding developers. The drive to create games may be the reason you started working with Visual Basic in the first place. After stepping through a few samples and getting the hang of working with user controls on a form, it may be very tempting to start to throw some PictureBoxes and a Timer on a Form and start to implement some game logic. Seems easy enough, right?
To some extent, this is a true statement. You could start to do this and it would be easy enough… at first. But when you begin to try to calculate collision and animate or rotate your “sprites”, you may start to run into some difficulty. And attempts to circumvent the problems often lead to even worse issues. This can cause an endless spiral of misery which could leave you thinking VB just isn’t meant to make games! ;)
The initial problem that most people face is the desire to use a PictureBox (or any other control) as the logical “Sprite” container for the elements in the game. It makes sense since the control appears to provide a lot of the required functionality already and it’s easy to extend it with more properties as needed.
...
Here is an example from a thread on the MSDN forums. This very simple example
uses a Timer component as the “game engine” and the Form serves as the “render
canvas”.
OptionStrict OnPublicClassForm1 'One timer controls the entire game
loop PrivateWithEventsTimer1 AsNewTimer 'A list of the game tile objects used by the
game Private_GameTiles AsNewList(Of GameTile) 'An instance of GameTime to track running game
time Private_GameTime AsNewGameTime 'Two bitmaps and a boolean used to buffer drawing and
rendering Private_Buffer1 AsNewBitmap(ClientSize.width,
ClientSize.height) Private_Buffer2 AsNewBitmap(_Buffer1.Width,
_Buffer1.Height) Private_BufferFlag AsBoolean PrivateSubForm1_Load(sender AsSystem.Object, e AsSystem.EventArgs) HandlesMyBase.Load 'setup the form Me.DoubleBuffered = True Me.FormBorderStyle =
Windows.Forms.FormBorderStyle.Fixed3D 'load some image assets to use for frames of
animation DimimageList AsNewList(Of Image) imageList.Add(SystemIcons.Application.ToBitmap) imageList.Add(SystemIcons.Error.ToBitmap) imageList.Add(SystemIcons.Exclamation.ToBitmap) imageList.Add(SystemIcons.Information.ToBitmap) imageList.Add(SystemIcons.Question.ToBitmap) 'create a grid of tiles Fory AsInteger= 0 To7 Forx AsInteger= 0 To7 Dimtile AsNewGameTile tile.FrameImages.AddRange(imageList) tile.Location = NewPoint(12 + (x * tile.Bounds.Width), 12 + (y *
tile.Bounds.Height)) _GameTiles.Add(tile) Next Next 'set the game time to 30 fps (1000ms /
30frames) Timer1.Interval = 33 'start the game loop Timer1.Start() EndSub 'Use a stopwatch to track the execution
time Private_ElapsedTime AsNewStopwatch PrivateSubTimer1_Tick(sender AsObject, e AsSystem.EventArgs) HandlesTimer1.Tick _ElapsedTime.Stop() 'Record they time since the last loop
iteration _GameTime.Elapse(_ElapsedTime.ElapsedMilliseconds) 'Reset the stopwatch to 0 and start tracking
again _ElapsedTime.Restart() 'Run a loop to check input for each
item. ForEachtile In_GameTiles IfMouseButtons = Windows.Forms.MouseButtons.Left
Then Iftile.Bounds.Contains(PointToClient(MousePosition))
Then tile.OnInput(_GameTime) EndIf EndIf Next 'Run a loop to draw each item after determining
which 'buffer to draw on this frame Dimgfx AsGraphics If_BufferFlag Then gfx =
Graphics.FromImage(_Buffer1) Else gfx =
Graphics.FromImage(_Buffer2) EndIf gfx.Clear(BackColor) ForEachtile In_GameTiles tile.OnDraw(_GameTime, gfx) Next 'Cleanup and swap buffers gfx.Dispose() _BufferFlag = Not_BufferFlag 'Show the drawn scene Invalidate() EndSub ProtectedOverridesSubOnPaint(e AsSystem.Windows.Forms.PaintEventArgs) MyBase.OnPaint(e) 'Draw the approprite render
buffer If_BufferFlag Then e.Graphics.DrawImageUnscaled(_Buffer2,
Point.Empty) Else e.Graphics.DrawImageUnscaled(_Buffer1,
Point.Empty) EndIf EndSubEndClassPublicClassGameTile PublicPropertyLocation AsPoint PublicPropertyFrameImages AsNewList(Of Image) 'this is the images per second of the
animation PublicPropertyFrameRate AsDouble= 8.0 'this is the total time to animate after recieving a
click Private_AnimationTime AsDouble PublicReadOnlyPropertyBounds AsRectangle Get ReturnNewRectangle(Location,
FrameImages(CurrentFrameIndex).Size) EndGet EndProperty Private_FrameIndex AsDouble PublicReadOnlyPropertyCurrentFrameIndex AsInteger Get ReturnCInt(Math.Floor(_FrameIndex)) EndGet EndProperty PublicSubOnInput(gameTime AsGameTime) 'set the remaining animation time to 3 seconds when
clicked _AnimationTime = 3.0 EndSub PublicSubOnDraw(gameTime AsGameTime, gfx AsGraphics) 'draw the current frame at its current
location gfx.DrawImageUnscaled(FrameImages(CurrentFrameIndex),
Location) 'if there is remaining animation time, then
animate If_AnimationTime > 0 Then _FrameIndex += gameTime.LastFrame *
FrameRate IfCurrentFrameIndex = FrameImages.Count Then_FrameIndex = 0.0 _AnimationTime -=
gameTime.LastFrame Else _FrameIndex = 0.0 EndIf EndSubEndClass'GameTime can be a simple structure or class which just
tracks executed'game
time based on what the game loop tells itPublicStructureGameTime PublicElapsedTime AsTimeSpan PublicLastFrame AsDouble PublicSubElapse(milliseconds AsLong) ElapsedTime +=
TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(milliseconds) LastFrame = milliseconds /
1000 EndSubEndStructure
...
GdiGaming API
Finally, if you still have your heart set on making a quick little game directly in VB.Net (and why shouldn’t you?! They do make such fun projects!), then you may wish to check out the GdiGaming API over on CodePlex
Read the entire article here:
Thanks again to Reed for a great contribution!
- User Ed
.