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Newcomers DBPro Corner / DarkBasic and Scrolling maps

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MorituriMax
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Posted: 12th Mar 2010 02:00
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Rewriting this questions title as of course I seem to have violated a noob rule (hit me for reading the noob readme AFTER I posted this the 1st time) ARG, whoever reads these I hope groveling and begging for mercy will save this when the other gets trashed on review. Heh.

I just ran across this site, and DarkBasic. Looks very interesting.

I have a quick question that I hope the answer to will start me learning how to program and make games with this software and years of productivity to come afterwards.

I need to make a simple (heh heh) program that will let me load a large graphic (photoshop created star map) file and allow me to center it on a section of said map. Then I want to be able to have a a control panel that lets me scroll sideways, upways, diagonalways, and perhaps even up and down through multiple "layers."

The graphic file (my starmap) is very big so I want to be able to load it as I go along (or automatically break it into smaller tiles if possible) so that it doesn't totally overload the memory.

Is something like this possible? It's more of a game-aid than an actual game but I'm open to expanding what it can do over time if I can at least get that much working.

Thanks for ANY and ALL info for this, I have been really wanting to do this and DarkBasic seems to have a wonderful set of features. I just hope they extend to this project of mine.

Look, maybe I didn't say every tiny syllable, no. But basically I said them, yeah.
--Ash, Army of Darkness
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TDK
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Posted: 12th Mar 2010 02:31 Edited at: 12th Mar 2010 02:34
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Quote: "Is something like this possible?"


Yes of course - it's quite simple too.

The size shouldn't be a problem either - unless you machine is so old it only has 16 or 32MB of memory that is!

You can load an image and paste it at 0,0 and in 1024x768 screen mode you would be looking at the top left 1024x768 section of the star map.

But, you can also use negative values and paste it however far left and up you want. To centre it, you would use the Image Width() and Image Height() functions to get the width and height of the loaded image, then just calculate how far up and left to paste the image to display the centre section of the map.

Using variables for the X and Y pasting position, which you can increase and decrease with, for example the cursor keys, you can easily control where the image is placed - creating the scrolling effect.

It's a job which would take only a few minutes if you know the commands and functions to use.

I imagine the image would have to be pretty huge (in MB) to have any impact on the speed of the scrolling, but pixel-wise, I'm not aware of any limit in DBPro.

TDK



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MorituriMax
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Posted: 13th Mar 2010 02:12
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Awesome, is there a good beginner package I can buy here to get started in the nuts and bolts of programming?

Heh, there seems to be quite a bonanza of different apps that are sold on this page, and I'll be going through them later, have to run over and do some work on the family computers so not much chance to dig through the apps tonight.

Thanks for the help, hope my other post didn't cause too much trouble, I saw the noob guideline post after I wrote the 1st message.

Thanks again. I am really looking forward to maybe getting back into some serious fun programming again.

Look, maybe I didn't say every tiny syllable, no. But basically I said them, yeah.
--Ash, Army of Darkness
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Chris Franklin_
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Posted: 14th Mar 2010 18:36
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Quote: "Awesome, is there a good beginner package I can buy here to get started in the nuts and bolts of programming?"



There's a free version of Darkbasic pro now.

http://darkbasicpro.thegamecreators.com/

Coding.....again, back to the basics xD
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MorituriMax
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Posted: 14th Mar 2010 19:57
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Cool! Thanks much, I'll give it a whirl.

Look, maybe I didn't say every tiny syllable, no. But basically I said them, yeah.
--Ash, Army of Darkness
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MorituriMax
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Posted: 14th Mar 2010 20:00
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Oh, never mind, its got ads in it. Not for me.

Look, maybe I didn't say every tiny syllable, no. But basically I said them, yeah.
--Ash, Army of Darkness
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MorituriMax
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Posted: 14th Mar 2010 20:04
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Darn this noob post delay, I'll sit down later if I can ever get a big chunk of free time and see how much the paid version is going to set me back for what it does, looks good, although, frankly, the showcased apps haven't impressed me as much as the hype that goes with them claims. 3D Mahjong seems kind of silly to convert from 2d to 3d. Most people play it in 2D because it's easy to see all the tiles at once (as the goal is to see pairs quickly) and the 3D version showcased looks like it might have to be scrolled and rotated to show all tiles for matching. Also, the underlying board looks rather muddy and there is some kind of anti-aliasing edge thing going on with the tiles that makes me question whether the programmer didn't want to use too much memory to use a good high quality image as his board texture.

Thanks for the pointer though, but I just do not do programs with ads (nice tradeoff though for people who want to save money) so if I do get it I'll go for the paid version.

Look, maybe I didn't say every tiny syllable, no. But basically I said them, yeah.
--Ash, Army of Darkness
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TDK
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Posted: 15th Mar 2010 05:35
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Quote: "the showcased apps haven't impressed me as much as the hype that goes with them claims"


As with any tool, the result are down to the worker. Give a crap carpenter the best, most expensive set of joiners tools you can buy and he'll still make you a crap door!

And I'm not saying all DB programmers are crap either, before anyone takes that analogy to heart...

DBPro (and to some extent DB Classic) are very good at what they do, and are both capable of producing excellent results - but it does need the time, effort and programming skills to achieve them.

Being a dialect of BASIC, you have in DB, a relatively quick to learn language which gives you access to DirectX for 3D games - without all the hassle you get when doing the same with C++ or Delphi.

If you prefer C++ then you can also get Dark GDK free too.

TDK



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Silvester
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Posted: 15th Mar 2010 09:54
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Also note that MOST of these showcased programs are quite old.. You should look further down into the WIP/Showcase forums to see some more RECENT results with the language, you can do a fairly nice and decent looking game SHOULD you put in some extra effort in cleaning up the code yourself and adding some more decent graphics and/or shaders.

AND you're putting a language down because someone used a few bad quality images? That doesn't make any sense to me sorry.


EDP Map Editor[2D]
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MorituriMax
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Posted: 16th Mar 2010 01:21
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Ah, excellent tips, thanks.. I was indeed looking at C++ over Basic.

I will now take myself off to check out the new info shared here.

Heh, have a good one! Tally ho!

Look, maybe I didn't say every tiny syllable, no. But basically I said them, yeah.
--Ash, Army of Darkness
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