Hi Thomas,
Agreed. Although the newer Windows libraries are currently no use to me,
still running XP, I certainly agree with the fact that extra runtimes should
not have to be installed on a system just to use a program. If the VB
runtimes do not come with newer versions of Windows, then I agree whole
heartedly that it's time to switch. I also agree about the wrappers. They
are incredibly useful to me. What I used to spend half an hour doing,
clicking the Direct X library into my main form and writing very long winded
and tedious code, possibly 20 or 30 lines just to play a sound and exit, now
takes me as little as 7 lines in the space of almost literally 30 seconds.
Adding networking and Sapi was just as long winded and tedious. More
components being clicked onto forms, sometimes even placed on the forms as
an object, and then initialising them. Reading references to find out how to
initialise them and use them effectively, etc, etc.
On that note, let's all who use it thank both Philip and the existence of
BGT. *Relieved sigh*
Regards,
Damien.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Thomas Ward" <thomasward1...@gmail.com>
To: "Gamers Discussion list" <gamers@audyssey.org>
Sent: Saturday, January 29, 2011 7:34 AM
Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Heli
Hi Jim,
Well, there are plenty of good and viable reasons to use BGT rather
than Visual Basic.
First of all, is compatibility with newer Windows operating systems.
Unlike XP none of the Visual Basic 6 runtimes ship with Windows 7
requiring various legacy files to be installed. Even then Visual Basic
doesn't use newer APIs like XAudio2, which is the new audio API for
Windows 7, and I have it on good authority that BGT will support
XAudio2 in a newer release. You can't necessarily say the same for
Visual Basic 6 based games using legacy DirectX libs like dxvb8.dll.
Second of all, there is the advantage of a c-style syntax. As I have
often said most programming languages out there use a c-style syntax
and standard. The advantage of using BGT over Visual Basic as it is an
easy way to get familiar with c-style languages like C++, Java, C#,
Perl, etc. What you learn in BGT will cary over if you want to do
programming in another programming language. Visual Basic quite
litterally is a road to nowhere.
Third of all, there is availability of the software. Visual Basic 6
was released in 1998, and hasn't officially been sold in stores since
around 2002 when Visual Basic 7 was released. That means in order to
buy it one would have to go to Ebay or somewhere and purchase a copy
which isn't worth the price you'll end up paying for it. On the other
hand BGT is brand new software, is up to date, and costs as little as
$29.00 for a basic version. That's a pretty good deal.
Finally, there is development itself. BGT wraps things like Sapi,
DirectSound, DirectInput, networking, etc and offers it in one single
easy to use package. With Visual Basic you litterally have to write
your own wrappers or code it directly into your project to get the
same support. For example, to get DirectSound going you have to
initialize it in Visual Basic, but BGT automatically handles
initialization for you. This makes programming games much simpler in
the long run.
HTH
On 1/28/11, Jim Kitchen <j...@kitchensinc.net> wrote:
Hi Damien,
May I ask, why do you want to port Heli over to BGT when it is a
perfectly
good game in the language that the creator wrote it in?
TGIF and BFN
Jim
Program in hieroglyphics, the original GUI.
j...@kitchensinc.net
http://www.kitchensinc.net
(440) 286-6920
Chardon Ohio USA
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