Monday, February 21, 2011

Starting DirectX with Visual Basic .NET - CodeProject

Image representing Microsoft as depicted in Cr...Image via CrunchBaseIntroduction to Article
I will try in this simple tutorial to introduce you to the world of DirectX through Visual Basic, although I am a beginner of both! I will focus on some errors that you could face, and I will try to explain each step as I know, but it may be better to view MSDN also for more information.
There is some talk about the poor performance and features of managed DirectX, and that when you want to learn DirectX, you should learn the native API using C++ or another low level programming language. OK, that may be true, but if you are a novice (or thick headed !), and don't want to bother learning a low level language first, and you want to have a quick beginning in games programming, Visual Basic is a nice choice.
Also, in Visual Basic you will generally concentrate more on the program algorithm than on the language syntax.
About the performance issue, that is the last thing you should worry about, with modern video cards, it is usually no problem. Anyway, you can't easily develop games like Metal Gear and Devil May Cry at home; if you want to develop Super Mario classic or the likes, you can use any language .
There is another important point about managed DirectX, it s no longer supported by Microsoft, and Microsoft developed another games library (XNA) which does not support Visual Basic (and will not) so you will be stuck with DirectX 9 and won't be able to develop any further. Although this is very disappointing, with some alternative SDKs like Slim SDK, there is hope, or may be in future Microsoft change their mind!


Starting DirectX with Visual Basic .NET - CodeProject
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