I thought I'd share my pet project--something that started as a "I'm bored at work, lets play with this" and turned into a "Hey, lets spend way too much time doing this."

Anyway, quick background. In the early 90's, as a 10-12 year old, I use to play with Quick Basic, learning the Basic programming language mostly by trial and error and reading the help file. I progressed from text-based adventure games to crude video games with hard-coded graphics. Moved on to Visual basic around version 2 and played with it, making crude apps and animations...and I'm sure a few rudamentary games.

Anyway, flash forward to the year 2008. I have Visual Basic (Well, Visual Studio) at work, and the other day I thought I'd fire it up and see what I could still do. I never learned how to do graphics, but I knew the key to sprites was the BitBlt API, so I thought I'd do some research and see what I could find out.

Here's my result: a simple game, with level editor, called Pokman...which, erm, in no way resembles a classic game with a similar name :whistles:. Here's the link to the "beta" version.... it *shouldn't* cause any major PC problems...that I know of .

You *might* have to have the VB6 runtime files...I know you use to need them to run apps made in VB, but I don't know now. That's one thing I can't test...as both my machines (Home and work) have them.

There's an included txt file listing the known bugs and what-not. The game itself is nothing complicated... my next goal will be to learn some C++ and DirectX. But 'til then, here ya go.

Pokman
Small file. Just put the two exe's in a folder and put the levels folder in that folder...though you can really put them anywhere.

*edit: fixed link

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

"A long time ago, yet somehow in the future"

I'm getting a whole bunch of these:(Win98)

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Yeah, probably only works in WinXP (and perhaps 2k?)... probably should have mentioned that.

I played it on my parent's laptop and it worked...but it ran really slow.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

"A long time ago, yet somehow in the future"

What is the player supposed to do?

I ran him around (Looks like a wizard) and then got a runtime error. WinXP

Well given the joy of part time work to indulge the imagination my projects take on a temporary status of things I haven't built yet.

First would be a shed to fit out with the equipment to build things. The latest project unaccomplished is a design to turn an ordinary car into an aeroplane.

As for real things I am supposed to do ... they are not pet projects and I am way too far behind in them as it is. Now back to variations of vehicles to modify and what to put in them ...........

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"Nature is obliged to let reality determine its laws, whereas mathematics is under no such constraint."

Did you open a level first? If you press start before you load a level, it will let you run around (but leaves artifacts) until it bugs out. If it loads a level, it should populate the game area with walls and "Poks" to collect.

Anyway, I thought I'd start to look at DirectX, which is much more suited for games. That's when I realized that even though the version of VB I was using, while more recent than the one I grew up using, is still 10 years old...which is probabaly leading to a lot of the compatibility problems.

So right now I'm dowloading C++ Express (the free version), and I have the DX SDK, so I'll have some heavy learning ahead of me. I've dabbled in C before, but not extensively... so it may be a while before I update y'all with a more diversly compatable product.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

"A long time ago, yet somehow in the future"

Uhhh...


No...


I guess I'll try that.

I did some programming back in the day. GW Basic, Fortran IV/Watfiv, and some softer stuff, namely, Lotus 123 macros, Excel macros, and dBase III+ macros. Even played around with some stuff on an Atari when I the cash register traffic was light. It was just some basic graphics, but it did help sell a few Ataris.

Good luck to you, Fazor. That does sound like a steep learning curve, but if you're already doing games, it's just a different language with more words and different syntax.

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I am Mugs, of the Alien clan of Usa, Nordamerica, a Terran, of Sol.

Perception isn't reality. It's merely an abstraction thereof, and quite often not a very good one at that.

"Staying young requires the unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods." - Heinlein

"Freedom begins when you tell Ms. Grundy to go fly a kite." - Heinlein

Good luck to you, Fazor. That does sound like a steep learning curve, but if you're already doing games, it's just a different language with more words and different syntax.

Yeah, the harder hurdle for me is motivation; since it's a "what the hell, I'll try it" thing, chances are good that after a few days of interest I'll...well, lose interest. But it gives me a reason to get back into my animation aswell, which is something I've been away from for a while.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

"A long time ago, yet somehow in the future"

When I saw this post my initial thought was that it would be about goldfish. Some time back I bought the Dos 6 manual and was all into my own config.sys and autoexec.bat files. How times have changed.

It took me years to catch onto this Internet thingy.

So pet project:- last month the aerodynamics and conversion kit for an autocar plane. This project will be revisited until it is suitably unaccomplished. The handy thing about being able to unaccomplish (or start) a project is that it never fails and achieves a high degree of being safely untested.

Over the years it is only those things that I have started on that remain incomplete or do not perform to a satisfactory standard. So if you set out to unaccomplish a thing you can set your mind to a variety of projects much more cheaply and derive greater satisfaction from a diversity of unaccomplished results than if it had ever become a work in progress anyway.

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"Nature is obliged to let reality determine its laws, whereas mathematics is under no such constraint."