The Spining Box Please

J

Jblake00

Regular
Joined
Sep 27, 2003
Messages
76
I would absolutely love to have a tutorial on the Spining Box that displays the directX logo. The reason I would like this is I believe that it would give me the kick start I so badly need to get started with Direct X programing. I need the tutorial to be as simple as possible. Also I need it to be done with VB.net 2002 and code. I realize that I am asking for a lot. But I can't seem to find the necasary starting point for me, although I have learned some stuff about DirectX I still can't seem to get started with something that will lead me to haveing the know how to make a video game or a screen saver. If it helps the question has nothing to do with schooling as I have already completed my course in VB with a B. However I must say I am disappointed with the course. I only learned enough to get me through arrays and reading from text files, if then statements and next loops. I barely touched into graphics with a program that displayed a Christmas tree with bulbs that blinked in a timer in a controlled array. The course only lasted for 8 weeks and unfortunately covered WinXP for the first 2 weeks. That was totally a waste for me. It was kinda an insult because that was at a very beginning level. Even though it is a relatively new OS for me it isn't enough different that I can figure out how to use it. After all I have considered myself an advance windows user for some time. I have become fairly good at modified the registry to make windows act more like I want it to.
Sorry for rambling on and to get back to the subject at hand.
To be honest I am looking for that good ole person to hold my hand and help me learn more about Visual Basic.net and also the other aspects of Visual studios.net. C# and C++. Strangely enough I don't seem to get as much help with my questions since I am not taking this for a grade. If some one had rather email me with code help for this. They can at Jblake00@cox-internet.com
Any type of help will be appreciated. Also I can be contacted by yahoo messanger. mental_maynard is my ID.... It would be great to have programing freinds. Beginers are welcome too.
I still consider myself as a beginer - to intermediate.
 
The purpose of the forums is to ask specific questions about what you're having trouble with, there are tutorials around if you run a google search. When programming with DirectX, I recommend that you're a Intermediate-Advanced programmer who knows almost the entire .Net Framework since DirectX involves massive amounts of maths to perform simple tasks.

www.robydx.com has a lot of tutorials but the good ones are in italian, I used the google translator to read them but it does a poor job sometimes. I learned more by reading the DirectX 8 tutorials for Visual Basic 6 on www.directx4vb.com, if you're an advanced programmer you should be able to read and understand the theory so you can adapt a .Net version of it. There is a 'basic' Direct3D 9 tutorial in VB.Net 2002 avaliable for download there as well.

If you'd like to program in DirectDraw, a good knowledge of 2D maths is required and knowing the main parts of the .Net framework is still necessary, because maths is still what makes everything appear where it's ment to on the screen. And if you're a VB programmer, being able to never use the compatibility namespace is important, this is important because those commands are too slow.
 
I recommend that you're a Intermediate-Advanced programmer who knows almost the entire .Net Framework since DirectX involves massive amounts of maths to perform simple tasks.
Click to expand...

I thought this too, but it is not necessarily the case as you can find examples in the SDK sample browser that show how to do what you are after and by simply changing a few values you begin to undertand what is happening.

Take a look at the directx demo I have created on my site. This link will take you to the source code so you can see how it is done.

http://www.xtremedotnettalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=80747&highlight=Walking
 
I recommend that you're a Intermediate-Advanced programmer who knows almost the entire .Net Framework since DirectX involves massive amounts of maths to perform simple tasks.
Click to expand...

It's been my experience that the above quote could not be further from the truth. See the attached file for an example of what I mean.
 

Attachments

If you installed the SDK with the samples (STRONGLY reccomended), you already have a number of samples. In the samples folder, look for the "tutorials" folder which has a number of simple samples (the "tutorial" part is in the help).

-Ner
 
createdbyx said:
It's been my experience that the above quote could not be further from the truth. See the attached file for an example of what I mean.
Click to expand...
Note that I said "Intermediate to Advanced", if you'd just bought VB.Net got the CDs out and put them on, I would definetly say you are not eligible to use Direct3D straight away. You'd need to know how to write at least some graphical maths stuff to make it worthwhile. You wouldn't ask someone who doesn't know half the framework to write an interpolation algorythm, especially without using compatibility functions.

For clarity, I meant which classes can be used for what purpose, you don't need to know it inside out, because, as I said, someone who has only used .Net for a short amount of time, especially with VB.Net, is likely to be prone to use compatibility commands and write algorythms and use APIs where the framework already handles those tasks.

The Advanced framework skills are necessary for making "good" games, but an intermediate framework programmer could possibly apply Direct3D to make standard Windows applications, for displaying graphs and things rather easily but moving into advanced, mainly game related areas, requires a high understanding of the general framework.
 
DirectX involves massive amounts of maths to perform simple tasks
Click to expand...

I was actually refering the this particular comment you made as it refers to "massive amounts of maths". Again I have to dissagree.

As you can see from the sample I provided "d3dmatrx for all" does not use any math at all (aside from simple addition) it just uses the methods provided my the Matrix class in DX9 managed. No knowledge of how to do rotations by hand using cos and sin are required. If you want to rotate something around a axis you can just call the method for it Matrix.RotateX etc.

Another reason I posted it was to help people who would not have even realized or thought of using a D3D matrix to do transform, rotation, and scaling for anything other then directx programming.
 
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