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

  • From: "Steve Spamer" <steve@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <program-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sun, 8 Mar 2009 21:01:57 -0000

Great advice David and thanks once again for your guidance, cheers Steve.
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: David Lant 
  To: program-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  Sent: Sunday, March 08, 2009 9:30 AM
  Subject: [program-l] Re: DirectX, VB 6 and VBS 2008?


  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 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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