Need help with a whole bunch of things

I'm just an around basic/medium leveled programmer and decided to make a partially complex game for a class project. Now, my teacher has basically the same skill level I do so he asked his brother, the expert programmer, for help, and I got back a whole bunch of things that make hardly any sense to me.

To give a little background about what I am actually trying to do, and where I asked him for help with.

It is a labryinth type game, where you move around trying to reach the exit. He told me to use the graph theory, which I do slightly know a bit about from math, but have no clue about for vb. The maze itself is a 5000x5000 pixel map, with the characters I use to represent the player being 50x50 pixels, so each square is 50x50, resulting in a 100x100 square map.

1. I have an 9 slot inventory with 5 possible items a person can get. He told me that dynamic programming it would be too hard, if finding the items were to be random, as I had originally planned, so to use static. He said I may have used double-linked-lists, which I have no clue about, and then he said to use a stack for my item list.
"Also it would be best to use a stack for your item list. You will then have a function that uses the system clock and random number generator to create a number. Pop an item off of the stack and use the random number generator to define which square the item will be assigned to. Loop through this till the stack is empty"
And then he said to use a list to store the items, set to size 9, so when it is full, it will say I am full on items.

2. I wanted to have random events happen in the maze, like pit traps and fire traps, he said that it would be best to keep the pits static, and to do the fire traps dynamically, based off the system clock and random number generator. What would be the coding for it to happen every step or so?

3. An event list. It would display the 4 most recent events happening, with any event after that, simply dropping off the list. He told me I can do it very easily using a heap, which I have no clue how to properly implement. He said to use a counter that increases every time an event is added to the heap, and when it reaches 4, decrease the counter then pop off the top item, and add the next event, and increase again.

4. Movement using arrow keys. He told me that I would have to use scroll bars to properly do what I wanted, but to instead, just use a graph, and when an arrow key is pressed, check if there is a wall, which I have no clue how to do, and if there isn't one, move the person in the matrix, and refresh the screen.

If you could help me, it would be greatly appreciated. I want to have at least something done out of everything he told me to do before I go back to ask him about everything thing else since I had no clue what was being said. And then he also said that to make it truely impressive, store the items in a seperate file. He said "text would be easy, but xml is the way of the future", to make it so I don't have to compile everytime.

So yeah, if you can help, that you so much, if you can't, I'll try my best to do as much as I can, which won't be very much, before I am forced to ask him for simpler instructions, or a nice 15 page sheet telling me how do everything....

Number 3 the event list.

If you have an array which has four elements, to start off with the array is empty, your first event goes into element 1, and the other elements are empty. Then you have another event, so move element 1 to element 2 and put the new event into element 1.
eg:

Code:

---

dim intCnt as integer
for intCnt = 2 to 4
  array(intcnt) = array(intcnt-1)
next
array(1) = ??? 'Your new event

---

Number 1 the double linked list:
I'm guessing here he is talking about having two arrays, one with nine elements containing the list of things you can have, and the other array having 5 elements which indicates what items on the list you have, so your array would point to the relevant element on the big list (array with nine items). I remember doing linked lists in college, but that was a long time ago!!

How are you going to store your labyrinth? Are you going to keep it in an array?, because if you were, you could set up an array eg 100 by 100, and each element of the array would be a single character which could be used to contain what was in the relevant position eg W for Wall, P for player or blank for nothing etc.

This is one way of doing what you want, but I'm sure there are better ways and hopefully someone here will be able to give you a point in the right direction.

HTH

If the problem is because of any lack of knowledge in VB, then I suggest that you write the algorithm first. That can be done without having the knowledge of VB. Once you have written the algorithm, start writing code based on that. Now, you will require knowledge of VB. At this stage you can ask whatever specific doubts you have.

What you want is very complex, not very hard but complex. I can tell you where to start each time you want to build anything with mazes: backtracking. Backtracking is method that programmers use when it comes to a problem with more solutions. If you do a search on the net you will find a lot of links to tutorials of this technique. It's not an easy technigue but once mastered will make your programming days much easyer :)
Want a smarter mouse to get out of the maze quicker? :) Use Recursive Backtracking :) Now here lies the true power of programming :cool:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by jp140768

Number 3 the event list.

If you have an array which has four elements, to start off with the array is empty, your first event goes into element 1, and the other elements are empty. Then you have another event, so move element 1 to element 2 and put the new event into element 1.
eg:

Code:

---

dim intCnt as integer
for intCnt = 2 to 4
  array(intcnt) = array(intcnt-1)
next
array(1) = ??? 'Your new event

---

Number 1 the double linked list:
I'm guessing here he is talking about having two arrays, one with nine elements containing the list of things you can have, and the other array having 5 elements which indicates what items on the list you have, so your array would point to the relevant element on the big list (array with nine items). I remember doing linked lists in college, but that was a long time ago!!

How are you going to store your labyrinth? Are you going to keep it in an array?, because if you were, you could set up an array eg 100 by 100, and each element of the array would be a single character which could be used to contain what was in the relevant position eg W for Wall, P for player or blank for nothing etc.

This is one way of doing what you want, but I'm sure there are better ways and hopefully someone here will be able to give you a point in the right direction.

HTH

---

Like I said, I hardly have any knowledge of vb, so arrays are a bit beyond me, and the person who handled the installation of vb at our school was mentally handicapped because he forgot to install mdsn, and also greatly messed up the installation of it in general.

Once I finish the maze, I'll zip the folder with all the stuff and upload it so you can see what I am actually doing. It may make it easier to give me some easier to follow advice

And here we go... I have it zipped with all the work I have done so far... I view it as pretty good as it contains most of the knowledge I currently know in use.

If you want to chance the code to reduce the mess or make it easier to work around, feel free to do so. It is in the very early stages so the coding is very messy anyways.

NOTE: The maze itself and the sound files aren't in there due to size limitations but oh well

I'm quite curious about this one so I might help out a little at a time.

the first tip i can give you is to indent your code - it will make it SOOOO much easier for you (and any codegurus) to read because you can see the program flow without havingto analyse the code.

so, as an example of your code, in sub form load you have this:

Code:

---

Private Sub Form_Load()
HP = 100
If TotalSeconds = 0 Then
    cmdhit.Enabled = False
    cmdpit.Enabled = False
    cmdpause.Enabled = False
    End If
    TotalSeconds = 0
End Sub

---

it would be much easier to read as this:

Code:

---

Private Sub Form_Load()
    HP = 100
    If TotalSeconds = 0 Then
        cmdhit.Enabled = False
        cmdpit.Enabled = False
        cmdpause.Enabled = False
    End If
    TotalSeconds = 0
End Sub

---

next, if you want to be able to do this you DEFINITELY need to learn arrays. they are pretty simple. example, you have Dim Event1 ... all the way to Event15. you would need to specifically address each instance whenever you want to go through them all. instead make them an array (it really is simple, don't worry!), example:

Code:

---

Dim Event(1 to 15) As String

' demo
Private Sub ListEvents()
    Dim i As Integer

'list all events
    For i = 1 to 15
        msgBox Event(i), vbOkOnly
    Next

'or, to just display, say event 14
    msgBox Event(14), vbOkOnly
End Sub

---

Your instructor has suggested the use of stacks alot. A stack is whats called LIFO - last in first out, similar to a queue which is FIFO - first in first out. So, the last thing to go into the stack is the first one to come out. Vb has inbuilt stack funcionality, but if you don't have MSDN it could be a bit difficult to figure out. BUT, if yo ucan figure out arrays, then jp140768's post details how simple way to make your own stack.

finally, in many other languages (C++, .Net, etc) you can declare variables like you have at the top:

Code:

---

Dim TotalTenthSeconds, TotalSeconds, TenthSeconds, Seconds, _
Minutes, Hours As Integer

---

in VB6 though, be aware that only Hours will be created as Integer. The rest will be variant - which may well appear to work as an integer for you, but could cause problems and is not an efficient way to program as every time you wish to do something (i.e. TotalTenthSeconds = TotalTenthSeconds + 1) then VB will do all sorts of checks and conversions to see if it can actually do it. as an integer though, it knows it can add 1 to it and just does it. see, a variant can be anything. it would be possible to do this without generating a compile error:

Code:

---

dim x as variant

x = 1
x = "zeb"
'oops - this will crash your program
x = x + 1

---

thats enough for now from me! good luck. it's a pretty ambitious first attempt, but it's definately do-able (it's how i started!)

The timer code wasn't actually my own... I took it from a tutorial site my teacher told the class to go through. Random sites is where the harder coding, ie the making it so .wavs could be played, although I could have done that myself, just copying from a vb book I have, but meh.

I'll indent the code to make it easier to understand, and implement arrays to shorten the coding, although I probably won't actually need any arrays since all those event strings will be gone if a heap is used, just a guess though since I don't quite know how they work. I may use one for the items though... depending on how I set those up.

And also, I can understand my messy coding just fine, just like my writing. It is partly something I do to prevent people from copying what I do, or to just generally make their life harder, whether they be a friend or a faculty member.

I'll do some work on it before I go to bed, and pray for more helpful people to help me out for when I check this again, which will be during programming class... and hopefully my teacher's brother will have also e-mailed me back.

Made it so the game allows you to pick another character to be when you die and start over again. Yay.

And when I made it into an exe so I could show a friend how much I had done, the sounds in it failed to load the first attempt, as in I had to press a button twice to actually get the sounds to play, instead of them working right off the bat. It isn't really annoying, but it is something I'll try to smooth out near the end, even though those testing buttons will be gone in the final version, I don't want them falling into their first pit and not hearing anything until their 2nd pit onward

Yay... now I have movement implemented... although it is buggy because I have yet to find the magic numbers that will enable perfect movement throughout my maze since it seems VB uses a different measurement system than Fireworks, since what is 5000x5000 pixels in fireworks, it is 75000x75000 in VB, and while movement, the background I put behind the maze so that the edge, if reached, isn't a bland grey, twitches if the character moves too fast, along with the character having some black twitches.

The person helping me said he wouldn't be able to help me properly put in a system for the maze until the weekend though so I'm stuck for now.... Anyone know how to make it so I can use the actual arrow keys for movement instead of commands buttons?

The 75000 is not pixels. It is Twips. Click on your picturebox and look in properties for ScaleMode and click on the down arrow and choose 3-Pixels. This will give you your 5000 pixels.
Wayne

Well that will solve one problem. Thanks.

for your keypresses, check this link:
http://www.codeguru.com/forum/showth...lobal+keyboard

And that makes 2 problems solved. Thanks again.

Now... I just need to take out that annoying flickering, and then set up the coding for the pits and fire traps... If I turned their mathematics into functions, so they call be called upon when needed. Would that be better, or does it really matter all that much?

whats the flickering?

as to the functions, looking at the original project i don't think they need to be in functions, although maybe put the hp adjustments in a sub so that it updates the value and sets the label in one place instead of 2 (3, 4,5...).

sounds like you have done a bit since you posted the original project though so maybeit owuld be worthwhile posting again. also, you are pointing to some things outside of the project folder so we can't access them!

Do you happen to have aim or msn by any chance? Then I can send/link to you a zip of it containing all the files easily. I don't really want to put a link up here since I use my school's ftp.

And if you are referring to the sound files, I fixed that.

The flickering occurs while movement happens. The blue background I put behind the maze so that there isn't that unsightly gray showing if the person reaches the walls shows temporarily through the maze in the middle of the picture box.

I dont... could you just update the previous post?

anyway, checkout the me.autoredraw. maybe set that to false before you do the bit that causes the flicker, and set it back to true after you have finished. you may need to do a me.refresh also if the autoredraw doesn't repaint the screen automatically when reset to true.

no guarantees, but it might work

The part that causes the flicker is moving the maze image, and without the game actually starting, it has just a small amount of flickering happening, but when I actually start the game, it flickers like mad... There isn't really one point that makes it flicker

The form's autorefresh was set to false anyways, and the movement makes the image refresh itself. I may have to make the bg refresh with it perhaps to fix that... but it still won't help with what happens when I start the game...

I'll pm you the link to the .zip in a second.

And nope refreshing the bg didn;t work...

Fixed the major twitching for when the game started.... turns out I had the reset starting position code placed in the timer instead of the cmdstart...

Now it just leaves the minor flashes...

Hmm... when I make it into an .exe, the sound files don't go with it.... that might explain why they didn't play the first time, since it had to load them from outside the .exe.....

I think I am going to spend tomorrow learning about some of the stuff my teacher's brother wanted me to learn.... even though it is from a 2nd year university computer science program... which is so very.....very.....above my head.... hopefully my math teacher will be able to explain all this stuff in terms I will actually be able to understand

http://www.csd.uwo.ca/courses/CS210a/

He wanted me to get an understanding of the stuff there... painful

Just a list of things that still need to be adressed:

1. The whole entire setup of the maze
2. Including sound files with the .exe
3. Someone simplifying those very complex concepts for me
4. Implementing a heap for the recent events list
5. The annoying flicker that occurs when movement happens.

There may be more, but those are the more important things for now.

The flickering is caused by painting to the screen while the screen is being refreshed. So you need to paint the picture very fast. The fastest way is using API BitBlt. Check out this tutorial at Lucky's Gaming Site.
http://www.rookscape.com/vbgaming/GBeebe/bitblt.php
While there check out their tutorials on games.
also here
http://www.vbexplorer.com/VBExplorer/game_tutorials.asp
they also have a BitBlt tutorial.
BitBlt is about 10 times faster than PaintPicture although they are both built on the same API.
Wayne

I would have tested it and be asking how to implement it into my own work, but my teacher sprung a highly useless waste of class time that I had to do... so I didn't get to actually do the tutorial. I'm working for most of tomorrow so I guess I'll just have to spend most of Sunday doing everything that needs to be done.

I'd be doing something right now but Norton AV be running and Norton is such a resource hog.

If anyone wants to help me with anything until I can actually do some work on the game, it'd be a great help to make up for the time I can't spend working on it.

Great... all that time spent learning complex stuff and we drop it because he forgot this was all in vb and that using the graph theory in vb would be too hard...

Now we are just going to do something ala LOZ, or FF1, which was what I though was happening all along so eh, nothing lost, nothing gained really.

Now I just need to find out how to set it all up, if anyone wants to take a look at how we are planning to set it up, look at the attachment. He hasn't gotten back to me on how to set it up so I can set each tile whether it is wall or not, and I'd prefer if I knew how to at least for when I wake up tomorrow so then I can spend Sunday setting whether each of the... *shudders* 10000 tiles.... is wall or not... I wouldn't care if I have to spend some time setting up the code, but with 10000 tiles, I need a lot of time to spend on the tiles.

Alright, Zeb gave me this:
"with the map, do you know how you are going to do it? best way i coul see is to create a text file and read that into the map array on the form.load event. the text file would just have something like this:

111111
100101
110001
111111

where 1 = wall and 0 = floor. (2 = pit trap, 3 = fire trap) and you read that a character at a time into your 2 dimensional array."

He said if I didn't know how to do it, which I obviously don't, ask the forum, which I am.

So, if anyone wants to help me, I'd really appreciate it (just the coding base for reading it, I can do the text file myself), as then I can focus on the bitblt for the map to remove the flickering. And then after that is all done, I can focus on adding whatever little things I want to add, and bring this topic to a close, and give positive ratings to those who helped

OK - here's the basics. you open a file, read the data, then close the file.

Code:

---

dim i as integer

' gets the next available file number
i = freefile   
' opens the file in input mode (read only)
open app.path & "\test.dat" for input as #i

' do your reads.
....

close #i

---

There are a number of ways to read the file - input and get. Input has a function and a statement version. the best for your purposes is probably the function version:

Code:

---

' fixed length string array
dim x(10) as string * 1
dim ii as integer

for ii = 1 to 10
    ' read 1 character from file i and place it into the array
    x(ii) = input(1, #i)
next

---

things to be aware of:
- how big is the file? are you sure? you may want to put some error checking.
- end-of-line takes up two characters - carriage return (CR) and line-feed (LF). so if you have the map set out as in the above example, you have a file that is 6x4 map characters PLUS 3 CR/LF characters (and maybe another if you hit enter after the last line).
- you can also use Line Input, which will read a line at a time into a string. it might be easier to do that until EOF and parse each string into your array.

That should get you started. be aware though that using the above techniques is "legacy" and won't hold if you want to move on to .Net

Which I won't be <_<
Lesse.... 100 lines... 100 characters in each... so 10300 characters in total for the file.... or something around that... so if I make the file with the characters into it, and use that code, what will be left to set up before it is a full map? I know there will be still what happens if such and such a square equals what number, but other than that, anything else?

Quote:

---

100 lines... 100 characters in each

---

You can read it in a single step
and hold it in an array. See
Cakkie sticky post, and search for How
to read a file in a single step...

Okay... got that set up... the loading the file part.... now all that remains for me to know is:
A) how to set it to an array
B) Set the maze to read said array for setting up the map
C) Setting what happens depending on each square
D) Actually design text file

Would any extra characters be created if I used Word to create it and then copy it over to notepad? Word is a lot easier for the design process because it can count the characters, so that way I won't put too many or too little accidentally and pay for it later.

A tip:
-use a fixed length font, i.e. courier new.

even better:
- get UltraEdit, or a proper text editor. I couldn't live without ultraedit - it's worth the 20 bucks or whatever it costs.

BUT
yes you can create it in word and then copy it to notepad. but it will cause headaches.

Honestly, if you don't have a real text editor (ultraedit or textpad to name a couple) it might even be easier to use the old DOS "Edit" program. just click start, run, then type edit. The mouse may not work well (doesn't for me) but you can use alt to get to the menus and tab to select "msgbox" options. theres no unwanted word-wrapping, it's fixed width so 1 and 0 or W all take up the same length (meaning your columns will line up nicely). and you can show off how hardcore you are cause you are using an old Dos editor ("cause it's better than Windoze man! Hey - if i could run Unix on this box I would") ;)

Anyway, back in highschool i did a similar project in C++ and I used the dos Edit program to create my map instead of Notepad. It just lets you type and doesn't try to do any thinking for you, which in this instance is probably a good thing!

No no... it had nothing to do with different character lengths throwing me off.
It had to do with maintaining a count of 100 characters per line.
I don't have that great of a memory, and that is helped even more by having adhd...
That was why I wanted to use word, I could easily count how many characters each line had. If there is a text program that lets you set character limit per line, LINK LINK LINK though please. It would help me out a lot if I ever want to get back into writing FAQs for gamefaqs, and just in general.

Well, alright, I'm going to start another topic about my next thing, which is connected to this one...

Since I am way too lazy to write out a text file, and because I just can't seem to find an easy way to convert the maze into file of 0,1,2,3, etc, so I am just going to create a program that will do it for me, with manual work on my part telling it what the square is.

Bah.... I just can't seem to get BitBlt.... maybe it because I can't find a decent enough tutorial... the ones given to me were, for the first one, too simplified, so it lacked several things other tutorials had told me, and the second one, the example file was moved, so it couldn't be downloaded so I was just left with a tutorial that went along with a file I couldn't get, and then all the other ones I find are too hard, too easy, or I do get in a way, but have no clue how to actually apply to my project.... Maybe I should just remove the blue bg....

Due to time restrictions, I shrunk the map to about 1/4 its original size.

Added Status Display instead of Inventory box, no point with such a small maze.

Still have to convert maze into .txt file in terms of numbers, and still need to know how to load it into an array and then also what else to do after it is loaded into an array

Load it in arrays
load the whole in a var
Split the var (look at Split function in Vb help) for VbCrlf and you get
an array of lines.
If you wrote it so that all 0 and 1 are separated by nothing, you will have to
manually convert each line (content of a cell of this array) into smaller pieces.
you could use a collection or a fixed 0-99 cells array, and load each char in it
using Mid$ function in a loop....
If you put a separator between numbers, you will have each line of more than
100 chars (should be 199), but you can use again split function to get an array
out of each line (=cell of first array) in a single operation.

Little things that need to be done:
Finish up start and end game buttons so when ended, it looks like nothing happened

Big things left:
Everything hard about the maze (the .txt, the array, etc)

Mkay, it is now a maze of 27x22 tiles which are 100x100 pixels each... still have to turn it into a .txt file

And then after that, I have no idea....

I know all the code is in this topic pretty much to do all of it but I still have no clue how to functionally use all of it.

Bah... I have to work for another 9 hours tomorrow so that takes out about..... 15 possible hours of coding because I have to sleep earlier

It gonna be a fun sunday.... be prepared for some heavy question bombardment on sunday

And no one offered any help during all that.... ah well... as long as you are there tomorrow...

Alright... once I get the text file done, I am just gonna give you the link to the file to you can download it and mess around with it, and possibly tell me how I am going to do all of this since it is due tomorrow pretty much, unless I can talk my way into getting a little extension....

Just be warned, it could be severely.... severely.... messy.....

Alright, got the text file done, and the link to the .zip is
http://www.sd36.bc.ca/earlma/bruce/P...ounds/game.zip
1.8 megs because of some earlier .exes in there but meh
Edit:Now reduced to 500kb

Major thanks to anyone who decides to help me finish this up

What happened to all the support I was getting earlier on?

Added a help screen, which gives instructions on how to play, not like people with a brain would need it though.
Re-added the stuff I had previously for loading the file, which were removed accidently through not remembering to re-get the files after having done some work at school while I was at home