[program-l] Re: DirectX, VB 6 and VBS 2008?

  • From: "David Lant" <david.lant1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <program-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sun, 8 Mar 2009 09:30:43 -0000

Hi Steve,

 

One of the things you will find is that quite often, things which you
couldn't do straightforwardly in VB6 have had support added in VB.NET via
the .NET Framework in one way or another.  For example, playing sounds used
to be something of a fiddly business in VB6, using third party libraries and
tools like DirectX.  Yet in VB.NET, there is built-in support for simply
playing audio files by dint of the My.Computer namespace.  This does not
give you the extensive stereo and effect processing capabilities of DirectX,
as they aren't aimed at the same problems.  But to get yourself going with
something that you think will interest you, it's a nice place to start to
get results.  E.g. if you're going to create something like a card game,
which doesn't necessarily require 3D audio or anything special, then the
built-in audio playback support in the .NET Framework could easily get you
going.

 

All the best,

 

David

 

From: program-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:program-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Steve Spamer
Sent: 07 March 2009 19:21
To: program-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [program-l] Re: DirectX, VB 6 and VBS 2008?

 

Hi David, thanks a lot and at least that's cleared a few things up for me.
I will, of course, continue my basic training so to speak, but I do like to
look at sample code and just go over it to get a handle on what's going on.
1 thing I'm definatly learning from this book, is that there's more than 1
way to achieve the same thing, it's a very creative process and it all
depends on the developer.  

 

I guess source code from VB 6 projects are a no go at the moment, which is a
shame, as I'm pretty sure the book I'm going through doesn't touch on audio
at all.  Thanks once again, the mission continues!  Cheers Steve.

 

----- Original Message ----- 

From: David <mailto:david.lant1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>  Lant 

To: program-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 

Sent: Saturday, March 07, 2009 3:54 PM

Subject: [program-l] Re: DirectX, VB 6 and VBS 2008?

 

Hi Steve,

 

Largely the process will be much the same.  However, there are going to be
syntactical differences as you've discovered from the upgrade wizard.  Be
aware that what you get out of the upgrade wizard won't necessarily be right
or work.  All the wizard will do is try to convert one syntax to the other.
Sometimes it will warn you that things won't behave the same or that certain
VB6 features are no longer supported.

 

Another thing to bear in mind is that there are versions of DirectX which
are supported by .NET but not VB6.  So what you're looking at will be old
versions of DirectX by definition.

 

My personal recommendation would be to get really comfortable with VB.Net
first, and then start reading up on DirectX when you're sufficiently
confident to write code for your own requirements rather than just working
through examples.  DirectX is not trivial, although sticking to the audio
aspects does simplify things a little bit.

 

It is also worth bearing in mind that generally most DirectX programming is
not done with VB, but with the C languages.   You'll find comparatively
sparse support and documentation for working with DirectX and VB compared to
C# and C++.  It can be done, but it's a bit of a lonely path at times.  Just
ask people like Justin and a few others on this list who have been around
audio games writing for a few years. <smile>

 

All the best,

 

David

 

From: program-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:program-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Steve Spamer
Sent: 07 March 2009 14:15
To: program-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [program-l] DirectX, VB 6 and VBS 2008?

 

Hi list.  I'm continueing down my path of learning VB and I'm finding things
not too bad doing the exercises in the book.  As I want to eventually
program audio games, I came across a tutorial to set up directX and to run
through a very basic example of creating and playing a sound with
parameters.  The problem is that this was written in VB 6 and I'm using VBS
2008.  My question is, is there enough of a difference in these 2 IDE's and
the code to make it difficult to follow and run this tutorials code?  I've
opened the source code to a game there: BTW it's on the BSC games site, and
looking through it, after upgrading it through the wizard in VBS 2008, it's
quite a bit different from the code in the tutorial!  Is the approach in
making audio like this in VBS 2008 totally different to previous versions?
Sorry if this has been a basic no brainer question, but I'm trying to figure
out at what level and from where I can gain the correct information to
achieve what I want to achieve using VBS 2008.  Many thanks Steve.

 

 

 

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