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theNerd
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Joined: 01 Mar 2005
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PostPosted: Sat Aug 06, 2005 10:37 pm   

Games in zApp
 
It is now perfectly possible to create commercial 2D games in zApp using the now* freeware SpriteCraft: http://spritecraft.teggo.com/

* Previously commercial licenses were sold. It is now freeware even for commercial games.
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theNerd
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PostPosted: Sat Aug 06, 2005 11:19 pm   
 
Zugg, if you add a basic canvas control SpriteCraft's output can use that via the Engine.AttachTo(HWND As Long) property (therefore, it needs the window handle) otherwise it uses its own window (either fullscreen or windowed.)
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theNerd
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PostPosted: Sat Aug 06, 2005 11:21 pm   
 
Oh, and you can distribute the SpriteCraft ActiveX DLL with zApp. I'd just put their "Powered with SpriteCraft" logo in the help files, etc.
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Zugg
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Joined: 25 Sep 2000
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Location: Colorado, USA

PostPosted: Sun Aug 07, 2005 6:43 pm   
 
I'll take a look at that. I might still want something that is built in for DirectX support, but if all I have to do is make a window handle available for SpriteCraft, it seems like something simple and useful to add!

In fact, you might even go ahead and try to get the window handle. The "Handle" property of the form component is an existing Delphi property. I'm not sure if it's in the published properties that you get in the current scripting system, but it's worth a quick try.
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theNerd
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 07, 2005 7:21 pm   
 
I'll give it a try and see if I can get the handle.

SpriteCraft will use either DirectX 7 or OpenGL - your choice.
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Zugg
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 28, 2005 6:41 am   
 
theNerd, I'm not sure if you are still lurking around here, but where did you find the version of SpriteCraft with the Engine.AttachTo method? I downloaded it and didn't see any such function in the help file or documentation. Is their documentation just out of date or something?
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theNerd
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 28, 2005 5:02 pm   
 
Zugg wrote:
theNerd, I'm not sure if you are still lurking around here, but where did you find the version of SpriteCraft with the Engine.AttachTo method? I downloaded it and didn't see any such function in the help file or documentation. Is their documentation just out of date or something?


Hi, Zugg. I've pretty much been away from the computer (except for work) because my wife had a baby and then a week later ended up in surgery for some problems so any spare time that I had was completely taken from me. Fortunately, she's on the road to recovery now so just the past 2 days I have been able to play around with things once again. In fact, this week I should be able to post a zApp application that is a true 16bit DOS compiler that I translated from an open source project (I will give complete credit to the original author in the code.)

As for the SpriteCraft engine, there is a newer version that has a different download location than the one shown on the main site. I'll look for that and post it here as soon as I can.
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theNerd
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 28, 2005 5:15 pm   
 
You can download the latest versions from here:
http://spritecraft.teggo.com/download/dev/
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Zugg
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 29, 2005 4:15 pm   
 
Thanks! And Congratulations on the baby! I hope everyone recovers and gets well soon.
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Zugg
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 29, 2005 5:31 pm   
 
OK, I downloaded the new version from the link you gave, but I still don't find the AttachTo method in the Engine documentation. So how did you learn about this method if it's not documented? Still feels like I'm missing something.
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theNerd
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 29, 2005 6:02 pm   
 
Try this:
Code:
Engine.AttachTo(HWND As Long)
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Zugg
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 05, 2005 3:55 am   
 
Right, that's what you originally posted. But what I'm asking is:

Where did you find out about this?

Is it in the help file? Because I don't see it anywhere. Or did you ask someone? Or what?

In any case, after spending the past week messing around with various DirectX libraries with little success, I think all I'm going to do is make the Handle property available and then let people use something external like SpriteCraft. The problem with DirectX and zApp is that none of the other zApp controls work when in fullscreen mode. So the only games you'll be able to do with DirectX and zApp are Windowed games.

Also, when using DirectX I found that most of the game code ends up going into a "Render" loop, usually in a timer routine that updates the screen as often as possible. There is no way to code this kind of high-performance rendering in zApp. Any zApp scripting would be way too slow. With SpriteCraft it looks like you can control sprites at a higher level and let it handle the rendering and movement. But I'm still concerned that zApp won't have the speed needed in most cases.

Certainly all of my experiments to do fancy layered chat windows for the new zMUDXP were a completely failure, even with compiled code. And if zMUDXP isn't going to use DirectX, then integrating zApp with DirectX becomes a really low priority for now.
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theNerd
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 05, 2005 12:43 pm   
 
Zugg wrote:
Right, that's what you originally posted. But what I'm asking is:

Where did you find out about this?

Is it in the help file? Because I don't see it anywhere. Or did you ask someone? Or what?


Sorry, Zugg, I misunderstood. I got the AttachTo method from their forum.

Also, I was hoping on releasing the 16 DOS Compiler zApp code but my DELL computer at home completely died. Hopefully I can find time during lunch this week to finish it up.
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theNerd
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 05, 2005 12:49 pm   
 
As far as whether scripting is fast enough for a 2D game, I think it is. There is a new 2D game "language" out called Brutus2D. Basically, it is just a VB app that uses the scripting control to expose the underlying 2D graphics routines (similar to Sprite Craft.) The script is "bound" to the runtime EXE (similar to what zApp Pro does.) It really does seem impressively fast. Too bad the author just couldn't release the code as a DLL so we could just pass the handle to a window (or picture box.)

Here's the link to the forum. You can download the releases from the "Official Announcements" section.
http://brutus2d.proboards44.com/

Another thing, if you add a picture\canvas control with an exposed handle all the Graphic drawing could be handled in there rather than just in full-screen mode.
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prasadab
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Joined: 24 Jan 2020
Posts: 1

PostPosted: Fri Jan 24, 2020 3:20 am   
 
How to download Zapp?
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shalimar
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Joined: 04 Aug 2002
Posts: 4662
Location: Pensacola, FL, USA

PostPosted: Sun Jan 26, 2020 4:56 pm   
 
It is no longer available in the store (apparently).
So I would assume you can't.
Perhaps Chiara can offer more.
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Discord: Shalimarwildcat
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mikeC130
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Joined: 03 Jul 2006
Posts: 108

PostPosted: Mon Jan 27, 2020 5:23 pm   
 
It doesn't appear from the store side, but you can add it to your cart from the zapp page itself. http://www.zuggsoft.com/index.php?p=zapp
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