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Coffee House => Coffee House Boards => CH / General => Topic started by: GreggBz on March 27, 2006, 03:32:14 PM

Title: Anyone played Starflight?
Post by: GreggBz on March 27, 2006, 03:32:14 PM

I'm recreating it with VB.NET and DirectX 9.0.
There is a video, demo and other downloads available here:
Outerspace (http://www.outerspacecrew.net/downloads.html)

Initially, I started a prototype in C++/SDL in Linux. Belive it or not, that sucked so I started looking into .NET developent with DirectX. It's been lots of fun ever since! Yay Microsoft.

Anyway, the team needs a 3d artist VERY VERY badly. Someone that is goood at milkshape or maya or truespace and such..  Visit the home page and contact me if you wish to help.

P.S.
Boy it's been a long time since I posted here. Glad to see you guys are alive and kicking.. unlike some other Amiga sites.. :-(

Title: Re: Anyone played Starflight?
Post by: adolescent on March 29, 2006, 10:58:07 PM

How do you like managed DirectX?  I've done some older DirectX stuff in C++ but was thinking about using C# in the future.

Title: Re: Anyone played Starflight?
Post by: GreggBz on March 30, 2006, 01:42:20 PM

It's been a pleasure to use. If you're used to anything pre DirectX 8.0 you should find it pretty easy.

I use VB.NET but did some work in VC++ with DirectX 7.0. The most I ever got was a rotating box. That took forever. The setup was atrocious. The same exercise in .NET with the DirectX 9.0 SDK was about painless. Object oriented wise, VB / C# .NET is plenty robust.

There is the drawback of speed. With .NET and the CLR you get more memory usage and it's a little slower. But unless your writing Quake 5, this should not be a big concern.

Also, .NET has automatic garbage collection so you don't really have to worry about memory leaks and disposing your objects. However, if you endeavor to do the garbage collection yourself you will probably do a better job of it.

Title: Re: Anyone played Starflight?
Post by: adolescent on March 30, 2006, 10:02:03 PM

Yes, it does look much simpler.  According to MS there is a 2-3% penalty for using managed code (using VC.NET here so C#/VB would have a little bit larger penalty I'd imagine.).  

I watched the demo and it looks good.  I'm not familliar with the old game but it looks like you're well on your way.  

Title: Re: Anyone played Starflight?
Post by: Methuselas on May 08, 2006, 08:45:38 AM

Starflight??

Erm, wasn't that a *REALLY* crappy Made-For-TV movie from the early 80's starring Lee Majors??

 :-?