Thank you so much for taking the time to do this! I learned some VB in high school, and I've been using it occasionally since (mostly at work, with Excel macros). I'm trying to get a game set up with a hex map (slightly different math, but similar ideas), so I'll definitely be watching the rest of these tutorials over the next few days. Already, I feel like I'm much better prepared than I was 20 minutes ago.
1.) You can use TimerName.Start & TimerName.Stop. After that it's a matter of determining where you when you want to execute it. 2.) You can establish a collision domain a couple of different ways. 1 - By calculating the distance between the centers of each object and colliding if either object comes within 1/2 of their width in pixels. 3.) Same as 2. Once you determine collision you can raise any event. I have some downloadable projects to show you how to detect collisions with bounding boxes.
@Aardaerimus Ahh, okay that makes sense now. Thank you very much. I just finished a intro to VB college course, and while I did learn a lot, they were more focused on teaching us practical windows aps then making games and using graphics.
You can always increase the number of tiles drawn * the tile size. this is the drawing loop [For X = 0 to Number of Tiles Wanted, For Y = 0 to Number of Y Tiles]. Just keep in mind that the more pixels you draw the more work your computer must do during its drawing cycles so it may slow your game down with GDI. I highly recommend using XNA (my new videos) over GDI, as the performance is much better.
I have a question about the back buffering. I don't understand how it works. Am I correct in saying that it prevents the character from flashing while moving? If so, how? This is the code that does it, right? G = Graphics.FromImage(BB) bbg = Me.CreateGraphics bbg.DrawImage(BB, 0, 0, Me.Width, Me.Height) Thank you for this very helpful tutorial by the way!
Hi there! Sorry for the slow reply. This is a really old stand-alone starter tutorial. It's certainly not a great way to approach this but will help get you started in understanding tile mapping principles. If at all possible I would recommend moving toward XNA for games with action and movement. GDI+ works okay for very simple games without a lot of moving parts. Soon I hope to be doing a much better video using XNA, but from my channel you can access all of my GDI tutorials.
@DrunkenWaffle 1.) Again, there's a couple different ways to do this. You can tie it to your FPS counter, or simply use a timer object. For each tick of the timer, simply change the source rectangle of your character. Naturally, you'll need a tile for each step of the animation. You can tie it directly to the walk cycle if you want, so the dude stops moving at the end of the cycle, or you can leave the timer on to do the old RPG style of constant movement (sword swinging or something).
The best way to check a finish event is either with a tile trigger property or to periodically check to see if your character is at a specific set of coordinates. For setting individual tile properties it might be best to check my latest series (Adventures in XNA). Even though XNA is somewhat different in drawing, the tiling principles are the same and can be used with GDI. Detecting player X/Y coordinates may be a little easier.
@dadnaya dRect is the destination rectangle (where you want it to be drawn on the screen). dRect parameters () are the same as other rectangles (Xlocation,Ylocation,width,height).
@DrunkenWaffle You can use a timer object or make your own and just use an incrementing or decrementing integer to represent how many pixels you want to move at a time. You could use another variable as a speed modifier. Instead of adjusting the speed of the timer to increase movement speed, adjust the speed modifier and add/subtract a few pixels per tick. If you do this during the walk cycle you may want an "isMoving()" boolean variable to make it ignore inputs until he's done moving.
Your best bet is to search youtube for pixel art tutorials. I recommend using either GIMP or GraphicsGale. Both are free and wonderful tools for making pixel art. I also recommend saving your art in a .PNG format.
@DrunkenWaffle 2.) I'm not entirely certain what you mean on this one. My guy doesn't delay before he begins moving, it could simply be a matter of when your drawing routine is kicking in. I usually fire the redraw immediately during my key press to force a redraw for each input.
@THEGAMINGRULER Using a backbuffer can help eliminate flickering by stitching all of the tiles together in memory then drawing/updating the complete image, as opposed to drawing them directly to the screen at run time. On slower computers your eyes can actually detect the drawing of the tiles directly to the screen. Usually this manifests as a flicker.
@MyNameIsBucket That's a very good point. In this case I was a little bit worried about time as it's already 21 minutes and I was afraid that I was already too long-winded. I've been thinking about doing another vid, showing a more realistic Game Loop, rather than being based upon the Form's Paint event. I'll take this into consideration, for sure.
You can use MS paint, or GIMP image editor, or you can just calculate the position based upon your tile sizes. For example, if your tiles are 32x32 you just count from the top left corner 0x32,1x32,2x32, etc. for the X and Y. With Paint and GIMP I think that both of them will show the mouse (pixel) coordinates in the bottom left, as you mouse over the image. :-)
Worked great. Really appreciated it. Was going to tip 1 dollar. Couldn't find the tip jar. I don not understand how the BBG works. Would tip another dollar for a comprehensive video about that.
@TheOrneryNerd Hello! Thanks for the comment. :-) To get transparency, it's easiest to use a system color with a preset name. I use "Fuchsia" (Hot Pink). Most paint programs have default color selector pallet, and this color is usually included, and if it's not it's usually easy to find. I actually made a video on finding your transparent color, that you can check out. Be sure to save in a BMP or PNG format. The code used is: Dim bmp as Bitmap bmp.MakeTransparent(Color.Fuchsia)
@cypherwulfe Hello there, CypherWulfe! The source rectangle (sRect) is directed to pTiles.Image (stored to the variable "bmp" in the Form_Load) via Graphics object's DrawImage method (at 10:00). In Form_Load we set: bmp = New BitMap(pTiles.Image) So, then we call G.DrawImage(bmp
@sharparrow298 Hey hey :-) Okay, so there's two things to remember. First off, the color that you use for the mask must exactly match the transparency color that you specify (i.e., bmp.MakeTransparent(Color.Fuchsia)). That means your color must be exactly Fuchsia in Gimp. If you open your color pallet it should be "FF00FF" in the "HTML notation" box. Value and Saturation should both be at 100. Fill the background with it, and paint only with solid, opaque brushes to avoid fuzzy pink edges.
@TheOrneryNerd Dude! Get out of my head! ;-D Funny thing is that I was JUST working on this. Actually made a video last night about this. lol You're on the right track. The game screen itself should be really small just because of the high resolution of modern monitors. To compensate, people try to make their forms bigger and paint more tiles, which lags the system bad. All we have to do is tweak the monitor resolution down as the game loads to make the form grow. :-D
Hello, Max. I did cover menus in my Adventures in XNA series. I know it's a bit different than GDI, but the principles are the same. You're right, though. I should definitely make a tutorial. Saving and Loading is another beast all together, but again, something I need to get on to. I do have a source example available on my website (random map project). Again, XNA, but the routine would be the same in GDI.
@MMORPGandMore Hi there. Do you mean your game screen, or your actual world map? To increase your actual world map size, simply increase the size of your Map array, like this: Dim Map(1000,1000) As Integer - This makes a HUGE 1 million tile map. If you mean the game screen size, you need to add more tiles by increasing the size of your X/Y loop, like this: For X = 0 to 25... Be careful though! This adds more tiles to your screen and can REALLY slow down your game performance.
Hello :-) The color match has to be the exact RGB value of the color used. There are many shades of purple, thus many RGB values. I'm not exactly certain what the exact value of purple is (I'm guessing R128,G128,B255). It might be best to use a solid color, or better yet, switch to using .PNG files. They carry an alpha channel which is recognized by VB and controls transparency in the the image.
@Aardaerimus Just don't know how I can thank you man!!! seriously, just a tiny small question (once again lawl!), is there anyway to make game's resolution bigger than 750,550? something like full screen?
Thank you so much for your fantastic videos, mate! just one question, I use paint to create my pictures, how do I make my pictures transparent in the Visual Basic form? Would really appreciate an answer, and again thank you for your great videos!
@sharparrow298 I'm not a master by any stretch, but I'm always glad to help if I can. :-) Good luck on your project. I'll keep adding tutorials as I'm able, too, so feel free to check back.
@Aardaerimus I've tryed to change it from "Dim Map(270, 270) As Integer" to "Dim Map(500, 500) As Integer" but when i debug it nothing happens. And if i try to change "for x = 0 to 5" to "for x = 0 to 8" The map becomes bigger but my character stops when it gets to the edge of the old size map. Help!
@Aardaerimus no no you inspired me in vb graphics but i guss this tut was too advanced for me so i looked at a more basic one and it turned out that i got it
Hi, Joaquim! There are a number ways to simulate a game loop; however, it can be extremely challenging to actually build a good one with proper threading from scratch. It is highly recommended to use an established and optimized framework like MonoGame. The GameLoop will already be established in the base class and should have excellent performance.
@@AardaerimusDAritonyss can you show us a precision GameLoop() on VB2010?(without using MonoGame or others) - i need a more precision timer; - and pixel by pixel like DIB's speed. thanks for all
@MyStada Hello, MyStada. :-) What exactly are you trying to do? Technically, your code does work, but all you're doing is tracking a single pixel (point) which is the top left pixel in each box. you'll have more control if you use the .Left and .Top properties of the picture box, but it will do the same thing. Can I assume that you're actually moving the boxes around and are trying to detect a collision? If so you'll have to watch all four sides of the box, rather than a single corner pixel.
@Aardaerimus, First, thank you very much for this tutorial. It is the first i have watched of yours, and it is very informative. I have a question, as I do not understand part of it. I get why you indicate the numbers on the sRect, so as to choose the specific part of the picture you want to you. What I do not understand, is which part of the code indicates that you want the sRect to come from pTIles.Image. I am trying to wrap my mind around it, but I do not understand.
@notna56 Did you accidentally put Dim Graphics as BBG, or possibly something similar? Anything with an "as BBG" should probably throw a message like that.
@ERICx223 I haven't done it in VB 2008, so I don't know if it's exact, but it should be VERY similar. All of the drawing and tile mapping principles are the same. The only thing I'm not entirely certain about is the initialization and use of the Graphics object. A couple of other people asked the same thing and said that some things were slightly different but that it was easy to figure out what to change. I'd say just give it a shot and see what happens. Maybe the changes are fairly intuitive.
Are you using Visual Basic or C#? Dim is a standard variable or memory allocation key for Visual Basic only. Also, make certain that you're doing your Dims within the Form Class and not outside.
Where can I get well animated sprites for free? I have Gimp but I'm the worst in the world at animating things like this, I've tried and failed every time. Can anybody help?
@watuphomi You can use your favorite graphics program (PaintShop, Photoshop, Gimp, etc.). I use Gimp (free at gimp.org) or some old version of Paintshop Pro. Just decide on your tile size (I used 50 x 50 in this tutorial. If you want to make them seamless (no weird lines) look through my videos for my seamless tiles video. :-) For transparency, use a color that will never show in your pictures (I pick Fuschia, because it's bright pink) as the background color.
Hey there! That's a good tutorial man :) can you pls answer one question? how do i make something like finish? if the character goes over the finish an event occurs?
please, how do you find out the coordinates and pixel info on the picture. my pic isnt the same scale as yours so the amount of pixels and where they are, are different. pleas let me know where to find this data.
@Xivelia25 This will work in any edition. If you double click anywhere in the middle of your form, the Form1_Load will be automatically generated for you. :-)
@St009768 Yes. Keys.Enter is a keycode that can be used in the Form KeyDown event. :-) Select Case e.KeyCode Case Keys.Enter MsgBox("You pressed the enter key.") End Select Something like that, or whatever you want to do with it. :-D
i have the c#, is the dims then meant to be under public partial class? that is the only one with form next to it. sorry about this and thank you for your time.
@CzSoft Thanks! :-D I was thinking about this, too... There are a lot of ways ways, I think, to do object collision, so I'm trying to decide what would be easiest and would pick up directly from the code in this demo. Of course, I was also thinking about changing this to static center screen movement. Not sure which way to go first. hehe
@5nowman101 One problem that I've encountered in the past with adding form objects (textboxes, buttons, etc.) is that they constantly await input and thus interrupt things like character movement when using KeyDown events. One work around you could try is to set each form object to Enabled = False. For example: Button1.Enabled = False This will make them unclickable. Then you can use another key (i.e., Escape Key) to interrupt the game and enable all buttons again - Enabled = True
@shadowzard7 Hello, Shadowzard. :-) The tile set image can be found at the source download link in the video description box. There are others included on the other videos, as well. I'll PM you the direct link to the image, though.
I think this tutorial is great, but if I can make a suggestion: take a break every few minutes and explain what the program is doing as a whole (e.g. how the variables and objects are pointing to each other). It's easy to lose the big picture in a constant state of "type this then type this then type this".
@kloki1234 It's always most satisfying to do your own. :-D Keep in mind, that this video is really old, and there are some changes in the newer series. Even so, these are very basic and general techniques and certainly not the best way to do things. I just try to make it simple to grasps the concepts of game design and help you to grow from there. Eventually, you'll want to use more advanced techniques, and then the sky is the limit. :-D
@EpicHamMan We're working in VB 2010. You can download the Express version for free from Microsoft. :-) Most of the principals should also work in VB 2008, though some things might not function exactly the same.
Instead of setting you graphics object to G = Me.CreateGraphics (the form's graphics), point it to your desired picture box. For example: G = MyPictureBox.CreateGraphics :-)
@DrunkenWaffle Thanks! I'm glad if it helped shed some light on the subject. I'm planning on making another, already, to show the other character movement method (center screen). This time I'll try to make it HD, since I totally borked the resolution on the last vid. :-P
@timelord314 I don't see any reason why you couldn't do this, though it may impact performance to cycle through the entire map. Of course, you shouldn't need to update a mini map with every cycle, so you could throw in some environment timing to eliminate unnecessary cycles.
heya! small question, I creating my own game using your guide, now, character seem to move 'fine', until I insert the 'over draw' code to the project (it just doesn't respond to my e.keycode command), why is that?!!? help!
Hello, i'm a student that just finished programming 1 and our final project was to make a game, mine was the crappiest out of all of them. So my question is how long did it take you to understand and learn what everything does and how to do things in visual basic? And do you have any advice, because i like computers and that is the only subject in school that doesn't make me bored.
Hello, there. Before i begin, brilliant tutorial, very clear. So i got everything working and it was so epic. So i tried to rearrange the side portion of the form, where the tiles are, add some titles, a button to end the form etc. and now my character cannot move! I have run through the code and there is no errors and i cant see anything wrong. If it helps, i did put it all in a group box, (Picture box with title, P.Box with tiles, button) but didnt like it and have deleted it. Please help!!!
@YouDucks32 I think it may be possible to use PNG's alpha channel but I haven't tested this. The easiest way to make transparency is to select a solid background color, and then tell VB to ignore that color. It's just like chroma keying (blue/green screen) in movies. If you look closely at my character sprite in this video, you'll see that he has a bright pink background. That pink color is "Fuchsia", so I tell VB to ignore that color with .MakeTransparent(Color.Fuchsia).
Thanks for the video, although I am not sure which part of this allows you to hold down the key so that the character continues to move. I'd rather not copy and paste your whole code, I just want to figure things out step by step. I have gotten the character to move using a Select Case e.KeyCode but the character only moves when I press and then release the key, it does nothing when I hold the key down.
@sharparrow298 Ohh And make sure that you don't save your image as a .JPG. This will create compression artifacts, which will change the color that is supposed to be transparent and it will show up as weird splotches around your image.
@TheOrneryNerd Hello there! :-) A timer will definitely be the key to getting the full-square movement. Please keep in mind that this was my oldest tutorial for character movement. I highly recommend not using e.KeyCode for character movement, because it will pause with each step. For smooth movement you'll want to use the GetASyncKeyState method from my other video: "Visual Basic Game Programming Tutorial - Part 4 UPDATE - Improved Input and Character Movement" Combine this with a timer :-D
hmm i cant find any Load Form on my Visual Basics, i have 2010 Express, i just typed it all in and couldnt see past System on the new Private Sub Form1_Paint, could you tell me the finishing line to that please?
@kris10ish If I had to hazard a guess I'd say they probably went with a more popular language, like C++, as the core language. It's possible that they may employ some Assembly for certain hardware functions or performance demanding routines.
@FinalEx3cution I try to avoid using any Windows form objects in my game environment. Mostly just because I feel that it kills the traditional game aesthetic. Another common problem arises with form objects when trying to capture KeyDown events, because they steal focus and often preclude events that may be necessary for the game. In the end you commonly end up having to disable these objects during game play.
Aardaerimus can you please help me? G.DrawImage(bmp, dRect, sRect GraphicsUnit.Pixel) doesn't seem to work for me. It comes up with NullReferenceException
Can you help me? When I type dRect = New Rectangle(X ' 50, Y ' 50, 50, 50) It comes up with the error - Overload resolution failed because no accessible "New" accepts this number of arguments - It also says I'm supposed to close bracket the (X unlike on yours...I'm using the 2012 Visual Studio Btw
@YouDucks32 You use a color mask (i.e. Fuchsia) and then set it to transparent using the Bitmap type's .MakeTransparent(Color.Fuchsia) method. :-) I have another video outlining how to find this exact color match. Hope that helps. :-)
Pretty close. Visual Studio is just a bundled package of programming interfaces, released by Microsoft. There is some ambiguity between the development environment and the language itself. VS = Bundled development environments for VB, C#, Etc. Visual Basic and C-Sharp (C#) are Programming Languages.
The problem is that Windows form controls automatically steal focus from the form, so all key down events are being processed by the form controls rather than the main form where your movement code is. If you must use form controls, the best thing to do is set them all to Disabled = True, and use a key press on the form to activate/deactivate them as needed. If possible, it's best to avoid form controls in a game or make your own if absolutely needed.
@Aardaerimus Worked like a charm! thanks alot! could you make a video of how to maneuver game instead of using keyboard, using the mouse... like in an rts game?
Thnx for the answer man! I did it! i just need one more thing pls!! i can't add any buttons, textboxes or other to the game :\ i mean when i add them and start the game, the warrior won't move :( why is that?
I know how to make popups for anyone that cares about simple things. Create a text document and enter this script: x = msgbox("tacos!!!",30,"I love...") You can replace the quoted with whatever you like. Replace ,30, with ,20, to make "Yes" or "No" Replace ,20, with ,30, to make "Ok" Second is Title First is Message Replace ,20, or ,30, with ,50, to make "Abort, Ignore, Ok"
Thank you so much for taking the time to do this!
I learned some VB in high school, and I've been using it occasionally since (mostly at work, with Excel macros). I'm trying to get a game set up with a hex map (slightly different math, but similar ideas), so I'll definitely be watching the rest of these tutorials over the next few days. Already, I feel like I'm much better prepared than I was 20 minutes ago.
1.) You can use TimerName.Start & TimerName.Stop. After that it's a matter of determining where you when you want to execute it.
2.) You can establish a collision domain a couple of different ways. 1 - By calculating the distance between the centers of each object and colliding if either object comes within 1/2 of their width in pixels.
3.) Same as 2. Once you determine collision you can raise any event.
I have some downloadable projects to show you how to detect collisions with bounding boxes.
Thanks so much. I'm just learning VB 2010 and seeing your code helps a lot!!
This video is good. I learned a lot. I been trying to animation for awhile and never had luck except for now. Thanks.
@Aardaerimus Ahh, okay that makes sense now. Thank you very much. I just finished a intro to VB college course, and while I did learn a lot, they were more focused on teaching us practical windows aps then making games and using graphics.
Thank you so much you explained enough for me to understand what I was doing and get what i needed done
You can always increase the number of tiles drawn * the tile size. this is the drawing loop [For X = 0 to Number of Tiles Wanted, For Y = 0 to Number of Y Tiles]. Just keep in mind that the more pixels you draw the more work your computer must do during its drawing cycles so it may slow your game down with GDI. I highly recommend using XNA (my new videos) over GDI, as the performance is much better.
i got it!!! had to rewatch that part like 10x lol on how you loaded to get to paint. =] now to continue to step 2!!!! loool
I have a question about the back buffering. I don't understand how it works.
Am I correct in saying that it prevents the character from flashing while moving? If so, how?
This is the code that does it, right?
G = Graphics.FromImage(BB)
bbg = Me.CreateGraphics
bbg.DrawImage(BB, 0, 0, Me.Width, Me.Height)
Thank you for this very helpful tutorial by the way!
Hi there! Sorry for the slow reply. This is a really old stand-alone starter tutorial. It's certainly not a great way to approach this but will help get you started in understanding tile mapping principles. If at all possible I would recommend moving toward XNA for games with action and movement. GDI+ works okay for very simple games without a lot of moving parts. Soon I hope to be doing a much better video using XNA, but from my channel you can access all of my GDI tutorials.
@DrunkenWaffle 1.) Again, there's a couple different ways to do this. You can tie it to your FPS counter, or simply use a timer object. For each tick of the timer, simply change the source rectangle of your character. Naturally, you'll need a tile for each step of the animation. You can tie it directly to the walk cycle if you want, so the dude stops moving at the end of the cycle, or you can leave the timer on to do the old RPG style of constant movement (sword swinging or something).
The best way to check a finish event is either with a tile trigger property or to periodically check to see if your character is at a specific set of coordinates.
For setting individual tile properties it might be best to check my latest series (Adventures in XNA). Even though XNA is somewhat different in drawing, the tiling principles are the same and can be used with GDI.
Detecting player X/Y coordinates may be a little easier.
Absolutely! Photoshop is a powerful imaging tool. It might even be a little too much for simple pixel art, but it's definitely useable. :-)
@dadnaya dRect is the destination rectangle (where you want it to be drawn on the screen). dRect parameters () are the same as other rectangles (Xlocation,Ylocation,width,height).
@DrunkenWaffle You can use a timer object or make your own and just use an incrementing or decrementing integer to represent how many pixels you want to move at a time. You could use another variable as a speed modifier. Instead of adjusting the speed of the timer to increase movement speed, adjust the speed modifier and add/subtract a few pixels per tick. If you do this during the walk cycle you may want an "isMoving()" boolean variable to make it ignore inputs until he's done moving.
Your best bet is to search youtube for pixel art tutorials. I recommend using either GIMP or GraphicsGale. Both are free and wonderful tools for making pixel art.
I also recommend saving your art in a .PNG format.
@DrunkenWaffle 2.) I'm not entirely certain what you mean on this one. My guy doesn't delay before he begins moving, it could simply be a matter of when your drawing routine is kicking in. I usually fire the redraw immediately during my key press to force a redraw for each input.
@Aardaerimus excellent idea, like a pause menu. thank you very much :)
@THEGAMINGRULER Using a backbuffer can help eliminate flickering by stitching all of the tiles together in memory then drawing/updating the complete image, as opposed to drawing them directly to the screen at run time. On slower computers your eyes can actually detect the drawing of the tiles directly to the screen. Usually this manifests as a flicker.
@MyNameIsBucket That's a very good point.
In this case I was a little bit worried about time as it's already 21 minutes and I was afraid that I was already too long-winded. I've been thinking about doing another vid, showing a more realistic Game Loop, rather than being based upon the Form's Paint event. I'll take this into consideration, for sure.
@PrgmNerd Always glad to help, my friend.
You can use MS paint, or GIMP image editor, or you can just calculate the position based upon your tile sizes. For example, if your tiles are 32x32 you just count from the top left corner 0x32,1x32,2x32, etc. for the X and Y. With Paint and GIMP I think that both of them will show the mouse (pixel) coordinates in the bottom left, as you mouse over the image. :-)
Worked great. Really appreciated it. Was going to tip 1 dollar. Couldn't find the tip jar. I don not understand how the BBG works. Would tip another dollar for a comprehensive video about that.
@TheOrneryNerd Hello! Thanks for the comment. :-)
To get transparency, it's easiest to use a system color with a preset name. I use "Fuchsia" (Hot Pink). Most paint programs have default color selector pallet, and this color is usually included, and if it's not it's usually easy to find.
I actually made a video on finding your transparent color, that you can check out.
Be sure to save in a BMP or PNG format.
The code used is:
Dim bmp as Bitmap
bmp.MakeTransparent(Color.Fuchsia)
@cypherwulfe Hello there, CypherWulfe!
The source rectangle (sRect) is directed to pTiles.Image (stored to the variable "bmp" in the Form_Load) via Graphics object's DrawImage method (at 10:00).
In Form_Load we set:
bmp = New BitMap(pTiles.Image)
So, then we call G.DrawImage(bmp
great tutorial..
keep up the great work and up to date..
@sharparrow298 Hey hey :-) Okay, so there's two things to remember. First off, the color that you use for the mask must exactly match the transparency color that you specify (i.e., bmp.MakeTransparent(Color.Fuchsia)). That means your color must be exactly Fuchsia in Gimp. If you open your color pallet it should be "FF00FF" in the "HTML notation" box. Value and Saturation should both be at 100. Fill the background with it, and paint only with solid, opaque brushes to avoid fuzzy pink edges.
@TheOrneryNerd Dude! Get out of my head! ;-D Funny thing is that I was JUST working on this. Actually made a video last night about this. lol
You're on the right track. The game screen itself should be really small just because of the high resolution of modern monitors. To compensate, people try to make their forms bigger and paint more tiles, which lags the system bad. All we have to do is tweak the monitor resolution down as the game loads to make the form grow. :-D
THANKYOU! That was a fun project- now for Ultima XII :)
Hello, Max. I did cover menus in my Adventures in XNA series. I know it's a bit different than GDI, but the principles are the same. You're right, though. I should definitely make a tutorial.
Saving and Loading is another beast all together, but again, something I need to get on to.
I do have a source example available on my website (random map project). Again, XNA, but the routine would be the same in GDI.
@MMORPGandMore Hi there. Do you mean your game screen, or your actual world map? To increase your actual world map size, simply increase the size of your Map array, like this: Dim Map(1000,1000) As Integer - This makes a HUGE 1 million tile map. If you mean the game screen size, you need to add more tiles by increasing the size of your X/Y loop, like this: For X = 0 to 25... Be careful though! This adds more tiles to your screen and can REALLY slow down your game performance.
Hello :-) The color match has to be the exact RGB value of the color used. There are many shades of purple, thus many RGB values. I'm not exactly certain what the exact value of purple is (I'm guessing R128,G128,B255). It might be best to use a solid color, or better yet, switch to using .PNG files. They carry an alpha channel which is recognized by VB and controls transparency in the the image.
@Aardaerimus
Just don't know how I can thank you man!!! seriously, just a tiny small question (once again lawl!), is there anyway to make game's resolution bigger than 750,550?
something like full screen?
Thank you so much for your fantastic videos, mate!
just one question, I use paint to create my pictures, how do I make my pictures transparent in the Visual Basic form?
Would really appreciate an answer, and again
thank you for your great videos!
im doing this as a school project but need help with tthe first image you use to draw the map is like a link to copy it or something
@CoolNerdStudios Absolutely! Grab them all if you like. :-)
Enjoy your vacation!
@sharparrow298 I'm not a master by any stretch, but I'm always glad to help if I can. :-) Good luck on your project. I'll keep adding tutorials as I'm able, too, so feel free to check back.
Thank you, that works prety cool, I am so excited!!
@Aardaerimus I've tryed to change it from "Dim Map(270, 270) As Integer" to "Dim Map(500, 500) As Integer" but when i debug it nothing happens. And if i try to change "for x = 0 to 5" to "for x = 0 to 8" The map becomes bigger but my character stops when it gets to the edge of the old size map. Help!
@tianman Always a pleasure, my friend. :-)
@Aardaerimus no no you inspired me in vb graphics but i guss this tut was too advanced for me so i looked at a more basic one and it turned out that i got it
here you don't use a GameLoop.. but how we can do a GameLoop on Visual Basic(include frame count and timer precision)?
Hi, Joaquim! There are a number ways to simulate a game loop; however, it can be extremely challenging to actually build a good one with proper threading from scratch. It is highly recommended to use an established and optimized framework like MonoGame. The GameLoop will already be established in the base class and should have excellent performance.
@@AardaerimusDAritonyss can you show us a precision GameLoop() on VB2010?(without using MonoGame or others)
- i need a more precision timer;
- and pixel by pixel like DIB's speed.
thanks for all
@Aardaerimus I don't get it... :) You make the transparent in VB? Can you make it in Photoshop or in Paint or... More detail.
@MyStada Hello, MyStada. :-)
What exactly are you trying to do? Technically, your code does work, but all you're doing is tracking a single pixel (point) which is the top left pixel in each box. you'll have more control if you use the .Left and .Top properties of the picture box, but it will do the same thing.
Can I assume that you're actually moving the boxes around and are trying to detect a collision?
If so you'll have to watch all four sides of the box, rather than a single corner pixel.
@Aardaerimus, First, thank you very much for this tutorial. It is the first i have watched of yours, and it is very informative. I have a question, as I do not understand part of it.
I get why you indicate the numbers on the sRect, so as to choose the specific part of the picture you want to you. What I do not understand, is which part of the code indicates that you want the sRect to come from pTIles.Image. I am trying to wrap my mind around it, but I do not understand.
@CaptainFrontFlip I think this usually happens when you reference an image path that does not exist, else drawing the Graphics object improperly.
@notna56 Did you accidentally put Dim Graphics as BBG, or possibly something similar? Anything with an "as BBG" should probably throw a message like that.
@Aardaerimus I'll get used to it one day haha. Think I'll buy a book for dummies haha. Thx anyway ;)
@Alnakar Hey there, Alnakar! Thank you for the encouraging comment. :-D I hope you find the videos helpful as you go through them.
@ERICx223 I haven't done it in VB 2008, so I don't know if it's exact, but it should be VERY similar. All of the drawing and tile mapping principles are the same. The only thing I'm not entirely certain about is the initialization and use of the Graphics object. A couple of other people asked the same thing and said that some things were slightly different but that it was easy to figure out what to change.
I'd say just give it a shot and see what happens. Maybe the changes are fairly intuitive.
Are you using Visual Basic or C#? Dim is a standard variable or memory allocation key for Visual Basic only.
Also, make certain that you're doing your Dims within the Form Class and not outside.
Where can I get well animated sprites for free? I have Gimp but I'm the worst in the world at animating things like this, I've tried and failed every time. Can anybody help?
dude, you, are, AWESOME!!!!!!!!
@watuphomi You can use your favorite graphics program (PaintShop, Photoshop, Gimp, etc.). I use Gimp (free at gimp.org) or some old version of Paintshop Pro. Just decide on your tile size (I used 50 x 50 in this tutorial. If you want to make them seamless (no weird lines) look through my videos for my seamless tiles video. :-) For transparency, use a color that will never show in your pictures (I pick Fuschia, because it's bright pink) as the background color.
Hey there! That's a good tutorial man :)
can you pls answer one question?
how do i make something like finish?
if the character goes over the finish an event occurs?
please, how do you find out the coordinates and pixel info on the picture. my pic isnt the same scale as yours so the amount of pixels and where they are, are different. pleas let me know where to find this data.
@Xivelia25 This will work in any edition. If you double click anywhere in the middle of your form, the Form1_Load will be automatically generated for you. :-)
@St009768 Yes. Keys.Enter is a keycode that can be used in the Form KeyDown event. :-)
Select Case e.KeyCode
Case Keys.Enter
MsgBox("You pressed the enter key.")
End Select
Something like that, or whatever you want to do with it. :-D
i have the c#, is the dims then meant to be under public partial class? that is the only one with form next to it. sorry about this and thank you for your time.
@CzSoft Thanks! :-D I was thinking about this, too... There are a lot of ways ways, I think, to do object collision, so I'm trying to decide what would be easiest and would pick up directly from the code in this demo.
Of course, I was also thinking about changing this to static center screen movement. Not sure which way to go first. hehe
@5nowman101 One problem that I've encountered in the past with adding form objects (textboxes, buttons, etc.) is that they constantly await input and thus interrupt things like character movement when using KeyDown events.
One work around you could try is to set each form object to Enabled = False.
For example: Button1.Enabled = False
This will make them unclickable.
Then you can use another key (i.e., Escape Key) to interrupt the game and enable all buttons again - Enabled = True
@shadowzard7 Hello, Shadowzard. :-) The tile set image can be found at the source download link in the video description box. There are others included on the other videos, as well. I'll PM you the direct link to the image, though.
I think this tutorial is great, but if I can make a suggestion: take a break every few minutes and explain what the program is doing as a whole (e.g. how the variables and objects are pointing to each other). It's easy to lose the big picture in a constant state of "type this then type this then type this".
@SamusDrake Always a pleasure, my friend. :-D
@kloki1234 It's always most satisfying to do your own. :-D Keep in mind, that this video is really old, and there are some changes in the newer series.
Even so, these are very basic and general techniques and certainly not the best way to do things. I just try to make it simple to grasps the concepts of game design and help you to grow from there. Eventually, you'll want to use more advanced techniques, and then the sky is the limit. :-D
@EpicHamMan We're working in VB 2010. You can download the Express version for free from Microsoft. :-)
Most of the principals should also work in VB 2008, though some things might not function exactly the same.
Instead of setting you graphics object to G = Me.CreateGraphics (the form's graphics), point it to your desired picture box. For example: G = MyPictureBox.CreateGraphics
:-)
Add a Timer then set the Timer Interval lower then 100, adjusted mine to 50. :)
@DrunkenWaffle Thanks! I'm glad if it helped shed some light on the subject.
I'm planning on making another, already, to show the other character movement method (center screen). This time I'll try to make it HD, since I totally borked the resolution on the last vid. :-P
@timelord314 I don't see any reason why you couldn't do this, though it may impact performance to cycle through the entire map. Of course, you shouldn't need to update a mini map with every cycle, so you could throw in some environment timing to eliminate unnecessary cycles.
@Aardaerimus Thank You I'm gonna try to make my own if I fail ill use yours :D
heya! small question,
I creating my own game using your guide, now,
character seem to move 'fine', until I insert the 'over draw' code to the project (it just doesn't respond to my e.keycode command), why is that?!!?
help!
Hello, i'm a student that just finished programming 1 and our final project was to make a game, mine was the crappiest out of all of them. So my question is how long did it take you to understand and learn what everything does and how to do things in visual basic? And do you have any advice, because i like computers and that is the only subject in school that doesn't make me bored.
Hello, there. Before i begin, brilliant tutorial, very clear. So i got everything working and it was so epic. So i tried to rearrange the side portion of the form, where the tiles are, add some titles, a button to end the form etc. and now my character cannot move! I have run through the code and there is no errors and i cant see anything wrong. If it helps, i did put it all in a group box, (Picture box with title, P.Box with tiles, button) but didnt like it and have deleted it. Please help!!!
@YouDucks32 I think it may be possible to use PNG's alpha channel but I haven't tested this. The easiest way to make transparency is to select a solid background color, and then tell VB to ignore that color. It's just like chroma keying (blue/green screen) in movies. If you look closely at my character sprite in this video, you'll see that he has a bright pink background. That pink color is "Fuchsia", so I tell VB to ignore that color with .MakeTransparent(Color.Fuchsia).
Thanks for the video, although I am not sure which part of this allows you to hold down the key so that the character continues to move. I'd rather not copy and paste your whole code, I just want to figure things out step by step. I have gotten the character to move using a Select Case e.KeyCode but the character only moves when I press and then release the key, it does nothing when I hold the key down.
@Aardaerimus Thanks soo much, again! :D
@sharparrow298 Ohh And make sure that you don't save your image as a .JPG. This will create compression artifacts, which will change the color that is supposed to be transparent and it will show up as weird splotches around your image.
@TheOrneryNerd Hello there! :-)
A timer will definitely be the key to getting the full-square movement. Please keep in mind that this was my oldest tutorial for character movement.
I highly recommend not using e.KeyCode for character movement, because it will pause with each step. For smooth movement you'll want to use the GetASyncKeyState method from my other video: "Visual Basic Game Programming Tutorial - Part 4 UPDATE - Improved Input and Character Movement"
Combine this with a timer :-D
hmm i cant find any Load Form on my Visual Basics, i have 2010 Express, i just typed it all in and couldnt see past System on the new Private Sub Form1_Paint, could you tell me the finishing line to that please?
@kris10ish If I had to hazard a guess I'd say they probably went with a more popular language, like C++, as the core language. It's possible that they may employ some Assembly for certain hardware functions or performance demanding routines.
@notna56 No worries! We're all still learning, here. :-D Always feel free to ask questions. :-)
@FinalEx3cution I try to avoid using any Windows form objects in my game environment. Mostly just because I feel that it kills the traditional game aesthetic.
Another common problem arises with form objects when trying to capture KeyDown events, because they steal focus and often preclude events that may be necessary for the game. In the end you commonly end up having to disable these objects during game play.
how do you make the picture? im just trying to learn programming and want to create a game but i need help on how to make that pic
Thank You SO Much Man
Aardaerimus can you please help me? G.DrawImage(bmp, dRect, sRect GraphicsUnit.Pixel) doesn't seem to work for me. It comes up with NullReferenceException
Thank you very much, you are a sir!
Yeah I can only dream of ever being that good.
Can you help me?
When I type
dRect = New Rectangle(X ' 50, Y ' 50, 50, 50)
It comes up with the error - Overload resolution failed because no accessible "New" accepts this number of arguments -
It also says I'm supposed to close bracket the (X unlike on yours...I'm using the 2012 Visual Studio Btw
@YouDucks32 You use a color mask (i.e. Fuchsia) and then set it to transparent using the Bitmap type's .MakeTransparent(Color.Fuchsia) method. :-) I have another video outlining how to find this exact color match.
Hope that helps. :-)
hi sorry im very new to this, i have a problem, when i type dim it isnt going blue. what am i doing wrong? please help me.
I realized that the map is too small for my game.. Can you tell me how I can make it bigger in width? thx
Pretty close. Visual Studio is just a bundled package of programming interfaces, released by Microsoft.
There is some ambiguity between the development environment and the language itself.
VS = Bundled development environments for VB, C#, Etc.
Visual Basic and C-Sharp (C#) are Programming Languages.
I'm sorry, I haven't used 2012 yet. I believe it should be very similar, though.
Are you receiving a specific error?
How did you make the transparent image?
Are there any apostrophes in your assembly name?
The problem is that Windows form controls automatically steal focus from the form, so all key down events are being processed by the form controls rather than the main form where your movement code is.
If you must use form controls, the best thing to do is set them all to Disabled = True, and use a key press on the form to activate/deactivate them as needed.
If possible, it's best to avoid form controls in a game or make your own if absolutely needed.
@Aardaerimus
Worked like a charm! thanks alot!
could you make a video of how to maneuver game instead of using keyboard, using the mouse... like in an rts game?
Thnx for the answer man! I did it! i just need one more thing pls!!
i can't add any buttons, textboxes or other to the game :\
i mean when i add them and start the game, the warrior won't move :(
why is that?
I know how to make popups for anyone that cares about simple things.
Create a text document and enter this script:
x = msgbox("tacos!!!",30,"I love...")
You can replace the quoted with whatever you like.
Replace ,30, with ,20, to make "Yes" or "No"
Replace ,20, with ,30, to make "Ok"
Second is Title
First is Message
Replace ,20, or ,30, with ,50, to make "Abort, Ignore, Ok"