Getting Started: How to write killer games in Visual Basic!!!

["GameProgrammer.Com" <bob@pendleton.com>]

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GameProgrammer.Com: Getting Started: How to write killer
games in Visual Basic!!!
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By Jim Corosa on Tuesday, August 15, 2000 - 04:14 pm:

 Great! Now that I have captured your attension lets get
down to the basics. First off (to be painfully blunt): It is
physically impossible to create a descent game with Visual
Basic and I will explain why...

Visual Basic is designed largely for the creation or
developement of business applications. I believe that it is
said that at least 90% of VB applications use a database in
some way. Visual Basic is basically a macro of Windows API
programming. It is an object-based language which uses
controls like command buttons and text boxes (incidentally
these are actually all classed as windows, but that is
beyond the scope of this discussion). In short Visual Basic
applications are event-driven; they wait for the user's
input, and then they do something. A video game is
considered real-time; it will continue to execute (do
something), whether the user makes input or not. When I
refer to video games, I don't mean games like windows
solitare, or tic tac toe. I mean games like Need For Speed,
Quake, and so on. The opponents/enemies in these games will
continue to move regardless of whether you input or not.
This is real-time. Games typically process at 15-24 frames
per second. Each frame is a processing loop where drawing,
and artificial intelligence logic is computed. Further more
you must have access to pointers and dynamic memory access
(this is not a programming course, so I'm not here to define
these for you). In short Visual Basic doesn't have the
latter and even if it did, it would run too slow to do any
good. Inline assembly is the fastest way to perform
opperations and is not supported in VB either. Games are
generally written now adays in C/C++ (usually with a Visual
C++ compiler) using Windows API coupled with DirectX and
maybe a little OpenGL (though much slower than DirectX). I
suggest that you get a Visual C++ compiler and a good book
(Andre' LaMothe is an excellent writer who can explain
things in a way that even a child could understand). Finally
one last thing about VB: As I mentioned earlier VB is just a
macro of Windows API. If two identical programs were
written; one in C Windows API, and the other (a splitting
image) in VB; the Windows API would rock on the VB
application for speed! So why do people use VB at all?
Because it takes considerably less time to develope an
application tha Windows API, easier to debug, and you don't
even have to be a real programmer to use it.
The End

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