The sections that follow are detailed steps that outline the process I'm using to make a game with VB5. I'll try to break the sections down into bite (byte?) sized chunks, and will add sections as the game progresses. The very first step is, of course, to decide in great detail what kind of game I want to make. This part will be easy - I am re-making a game that I wrote for the Amiga a few years back called "Drone Wars". The game is basically this: you control a fleet of ships in an asteroid field to battle against a fleet of enemy (computer) controlled ships. This game MUST contain: straight forward controls for the human player to maneuver/conduct his fleet, algorithms to control the enemy ships, a way of keeping track of damage to ships, a scoring system, cool graphics, a music track, sound fx, and later if possible - a 2 player option. Since I wrote this game once before, I have a fair idea of where I'm going. For the sake of whoever may be following this, I am not going to use DirectX or other advanced supplements. The only plug-in that will eventually be needed is "mod-plug" for playing the sound track and a Wav ocx. But we can worry about these when we get there. This first section to follow will cover a little bit of the graphics I have made for this game. Since I know where I'm heading with writing this, I wanted to jump in and see what it was going to look like to get motivated to do the rest. The next section will cover the first incarnation of the computer controlled algorithms that we can call the Artificial Intelligence (and I use that term loosely) module. First the graphics...
Section 3: 12-08-98: Displaying the Fleet
Section 4: 12-09-98: Moving the Fleet
Section 5: 12-12-98: Fun with Drones
Section 6: 12-15-98: Integrating the AI
Section 7: 1-1-99: Improving the AI: Squad Warfare
Section 8: 1-2-99: Title Gfx part 1
Section 9: 1-7-99: Improving the AI: Better Squads
Section 10: 1-7-99: Title Gfx part 2
Section 11: 1-29-99: A Closer look at the new "Zoom View"
Section 12: 2-6-99: The Options
Section 13:
Section 14: