Mirage Source

I've been doing some basic research on direct x.. using direct x 8 or direct 3d seems to be faster and seems to be able to do alphablending, particles, etc 'easier' than direct x 7 direct draw. Now, by saying 'easier' is a bad term to use, although i cant think of a good word to use at the moment.. Also with 'faster' this is just a few tutorials i've read about it..

Now, the only downside i can see from using direct x 8 is that people would have to work with surfaces in powers of 2. What i mean by that is that surfaces sizes are: 2x2, 4x4, 8x8, 16x16, 32x32, etc.. It also cant hold sizes larger than 256x256.. Now, with this explained it also means that surfaces must also be square.. Direct 3d can also scale extremely well. This is basically the way of manipulating a surface, be is increasing its size, of reversing the way it looks, etc.. All this if from what i've read on other websites about direct 3d..

Anyway, back to my question.. or request.. If anyone is able to help guide me or help me convert a normal mse into direct 3d i would really appreciate it.. It would be great if you wrote a tutorial about this.. Thanks for all input..

Not only would it make that stuff possible, but it would make tiles extremely difficult to manage.

What do you do, have one surface for each tile? Then you would have thousands of surfaces slowing you down.

There is, as far as I can tell, no alternative to blitting in DX8. You can't take a section of a texture and apply it to another.

The only real option would be to keep the tile textures in seperate files, load the textures you need at the time, and use them. Unload when not in use..

Some potentially useful things I can see in DX8 is the 3D stuff. You can place 9 maps on the screen, and move the camera to achieve that scrolling maps you always wanted. easy peasy... if you can get around the other stuff.

Ahh.. I forgot all about the tiles.. Hmm... Cheers for the heads up Dave

I have looked into it before, and I know someone else has used DX8 in their MS game. If you do persue it, please share!

Yes, what Dave said

Lol.. More like if YOU persue it, please share.. Lol.. I've been doing some research on direct 3d, but yeah, thats about it..

I did persue it, I managed to draw a star in DX83D... it was pretty kick ass. I quit there because I couldn't figure out what to do with the tiles. I sitll have pictures of the star on my broken hard drive, along with the source When I get that fixed (ordered the part yesterday (or two days ago?)) I can share what I did do, but it wasnt in MS nor was it much of anything.

You don't need a surface for every tile, you can have a texture/surface for every 16 tiles. I know in, at least DX9's sprite system you can have a 256x256 area and only blt parts of it.

Actually sorry to sound technical, but you use textures. Far different from surfaces.

Textures, granted, have to be in 512x512 or less (and by a power of 2 in size) to be supported by the common graphic card. Now for difficulty - no. Its easy to use, probably even easier then DDraw. Before you scratch my eyes out for that, you will have to use it for yourself and get comfortable with it to know what I mean. You can easily set up a rendering sub to make it easy for other people, too. But you just have to take my word for it - DX8 is easier then DDraw, especially if you want stuff like lighting, scaling, rotations, etc, then it is WAY easier and incredibly faster.

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NetGore Free Open Source MMORPG Maker

Please share something, then, this is something I've wanted for a long time

vbGORE in my sig uses DX8. Check around the Engine_Init_... subs along with Engine_Render_Rectangle - that is where the bulk of the DX8 code is. You can also check out DirectX4VB's examples

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NetGore Free Open Source MMORPG Maker

Yeah i was reading up on the huge features direct3d brings.. thanks for the link dude, i'll check and out.. and Dave, if you can get that source, that would be great also.. Thanks guys..

Mirage currently uses DX9 for it's rewrite. And yes, my fps went from 75 to 300+. (when removing the fps limiter). As for Mirage Source being rewritten or a tutorial about using Dx8/9 ... *shrugs*

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you could get high fps in mirage as is without too much work if you really wanted to
it is all in how you do it