Zugg Software :: View topic

Adept Joined: 01 Mar 2005 Posts: 277

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.

Adept Joined: 01 Mar 2005 Posts: 277

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.)

Adept Joined: 01 Mar 2005 Posts: 277

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.

Posted: 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.

Adept Joined: 01 Mar 2005 Posts: 277

I'll give it a try and see if I can get the handle.

SpriteCraft will use either DirectX 7 or OpenGL - your choice.

Posted: 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 Is their documentation just out of date or something?

Adept Joined: 01 Mar 2005 Posts: 277

Adept Joined: 01 Mar 2005 Posts: 277

You can download the latest versions from here:
http://spritecraft.teggo.com/download/dev/

Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2005 4:15 pm

Thanks! And Congratulations on the baby! I hope everyone recovers and gets well soon.

Posted: 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.

Adept Joined: 01 Mar 2005 Posts: 277

Try this:

Posted: 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.

Adept Joined: 01 Mar 2005 Posts: 277

Adept Joined: 01 Mar 2005 Posts: 277

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.

Newbie Joined: 24 Jan 2020 Posts: 1

How to download Zapp?

Posted: 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.

Apprentice Joined: 03 Jul 2006 Posts: 110

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