VB6 Game Development

Question

I am developing a game in VB6 (plz don't ask me why :) ).
The storyboard is ready and a rough implementation is underway.

I am following a "pure-software-rendering" approach. (i.e. no DirectX, no openGL etc.)

Amongst many others, the following "serious" problems exist:

• 2D alpha transparency reqd. to implement overlays.

• Parallax implementation to give depth-of-field illusion.

• Capturing mouse-scroll events globally (as in FPS-es; mapping them to changing weapon).

• Async sound play with absolute "near-zero-lag".

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Any ideas anyone. Please suggest any well documented library/ocx or sample-code.
Plz do suggest solutions with good performance and as little overhead as possible.

Also, anyone who has developed any games,
and would be open to sharing her/his code would be highly appreciated.
(any well-acknowledged VB games whose source-code i can study??)

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UPDATE: Here is a screen shot of GearHead Garage.
This picture ought to describe what i was attempting in words above... :)

Answer 1

Have a look at DxIce : http://gamedev.digiapp.com/

Answer 2

I think you will find no well-acknowledged written games in VB6 for precisely the reasons you state above.

It was not designed to be a high performance language. For that you NEED to use the graphics libraries (DirectX, OpenGL) you said you didn't want to use unless you want to BitBLT everything yourself using API calls which is probably not going to get what you need.

VB6 is interpreted, outdated, and I'd be surprised if it runs on Windows 7.

I think you need to seriously re-evaluate the methodology here.

Answer 3

EGL25 by Erkan Sanli is a fast open source VB 6 renderer that can render, rotate, animate, etc. complex solid shapes made of thousands of polygons. Just Windows API calls – no DirectX, no OpenGL.

VBMigration.com chose EGL25 as a high-quality open-source VB6 project (to demonstrate their VB6 to VB.Net upgrade tool).

Despite that, and despite my opinion that VB6 is often criticised too harshly, I can't help thinking there must be better options for game development in 2010?

Answer 4

You may want to check out the Game Programming Wiki -- it used to be "Lucky's VB Game Site" (and we're talking a LONG time ago) but all of the content (VB5/6 centric) moved to the Wiki with the addition of other languages.

It appears that much of the legacy VB6 content is still available on the site.

Answer 5

For audio playback, I have used http://www.fmod.org/ in the past. This, and other libraries like BASS, are only free for non-commercial use. I also suggest avoiding the built-in multimedia playback object.