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| Finally! building a front end from scratch |
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| headkaze:
As far as RAD goes you can't beat C# (or VB.NET if your so inclined). I used to code in VB6 and you just don't get the productivity you do in C#/VB.NET. GDI+ is available in the System.Graphics namespace and can do everything you need to make a good looking FE. Mala for example uses GDI+. It can be a bit slow dealing with alpha channel images, but it has full support for them (including lovely PNG's). There is also the option of using MDX 1 or XNA which will give you a nice boost in speed for graphics rendering. GameEx uses MDX/Direct Draw so you can see it doesn't really have trouble with rendering at decent FPS even with FMV in the background. The worst approach to writing a FE these days would be to use VB6 and Windows forms to draw the graphics IMHO. |
| Howard_Casto:
I won't reccomend gdi+ in ANY .net language, at all, period. Quite frankly, as you pointed out, it's very slow when dealing with alpha channels, and at this stage in the game, making a fe without alpha support makes it obsolete before the first release. Regardless of the language, direct x or open gl is the way to go for the graphics engine. |
| headkaze:
--- Quote from: Howard_Casto on June 12, 2007, 09:22:36 pm ---I won't reccomend gdi+ in ANY .net language, at all, period. Quite frankly, as you pointed out, it's very slow when dealing with alpha channels, and at this stage in the game, making a fe without alpha support makes it obsolete before the first release. Regardless of the language, direct x or open gl is the way to go for the graphics engine. --- End quote --- I think Mala does a pretty good job of being a FE and it just doesn't support alpha channel images, but it could if it wanted to. I think Swindus decided not to support them for the fact it does start to chug with too many of them. But it also depends on the quality of rendering you use, there are many options you can tweek to speed up GDI+. There is no major speed hit from using .NET compared to Delphi (the language Swindus uses I believe) or any other language for that matter. People have a common misconception that .NET is slow, but I really don't notice a huge speed hit, and the rapid development makes it worth using anyway. MDX for example only has about a 5% speed hit compared to natively compiled code as it is highly optimized. It could be less than that I forget the exact figure Tom Miller quoted on Channel 9. You can get away with not using alpha channels, but your right DirectX or OpenGL is the preferred way, it's just alot harder to write an application using those API's. If you don't go the obsolete DirectDraw way, you have to learn Direct3D and that is no easy chore. Even 2D in Direct3D is not that easy. XNA tries to make that easier, but there is still a steep learning curve. |
| SavannahLion:
--- Quote from: headkaze on June 12, 2007, 10:16:21 pm ---There is no major speed hit from using .NET compared to Delphi (the language Swindus uses I believe) or any other language for that matter. People have a common misconception that .NET is slow, but I really don't notice a huge speed hit, and the rapid development makes it worth using anyway. --- End quote --- That's because when .NET hit the developers market it was mind boggingly slow. .NET is a victim of the "let the hardware catch up" mentality. Don't tell me you don't remember the early press releases where Microsoft stated they weren't going to optimize many of the .NET routines. My last version update was to 6.0. I believe I have a copy of C# sitting around somewhere, but I haven't actually gotten around to getting a copy of the .NET suite yet. Lats time I looked, there was no cross compiling tools available for Linux. Since Linux and Windows are fighting for dominance in this household, it's more important to me to be able to write software for either platform. I'm sure the .NET situation changed since last I looked, I just don't have any incentive at the moment to find out. |
| MaMeNnO:
I've been terribly lazy with my front end... I really should get going on with it. --- Quote from: liquid8 on June 11, 2007, 08:26:37 pm ---Good luck :) It's a lot of work. I also would have started with a language you already know, but VB can make the development cycle quicker, and if you are doing a sort of "how-to" that might be the language to use. A couple things I'd look into: --- Quote --- Are you not having problems with form flicker when changing things on the control or form? --- End quote --- You most likely will run into this when you get further into graphics development. VB is not really graphical friendly. For VB6, enable double buffering for the form: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/cpref/html/frlrfsystemwindowsformscontrolclasssetstyletopic.asp or http://www.bobpowell.net/doublebuffer.htm This can have a negative effect on cpu usage, but for smooth scrolling is probably necessary... I would look into gdi+ - not sure if there's a reference for it for VB6, but .NET and C can both use it. It gives you MUCH better control of graphics (and you can do more cool things) ;) --- End quote --- I don't want to include to fancy looking things. Just a preview of the ingame image and a custom background is enough. What I do notice is that when I go through the list for the first time it's really slow (pictures can't catch up fast enough). The second time it can. Seems like pictures get cached or something. Is there a way to cache the pictures when I start the front-end? |
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