DirectX7 is my new friend. I discovered that as long as I'm in Windows 98 (not XP), I can use the 3d built into my old crappy Matrox Millenium II video card. Not many newer games would support it at all, so I didn't think it could do anything in 3d above like DirectX 6 or something. The only 3d game I can remember that worked on it was Flight Simulator 98. Half-life and all the other good games would only work on my Voodoo2.

Don't get me wrong, DirectX8 is fine and dandy. But when they tried to merge DirectDraw and Direct3d into one (called "DirectX Graphics" now), they basically made making a plain old 2d game a lot more complicated than it should be. Plus, my old Matrox card isn't DirectX8 compatible, so no mo 3d with that. So unless I plan to program for my Voodoo2(which can only go up to 16-bit color), I'll just work with DirectX7, which allows me to still use DirectDraw for 2d, but to throw in Direct3d on top of that for the cool stuff.

Speaking of cool stuff, I took a single block of a tetrad from Electris, and made it rotate and bounce around the screen. After getting bored with that, I decided to let multiple sprites be on at the same time. So by the time I was done, I had like 1000 blocks (no exageration) bouncing around the screen at random speeds, while rotating in random directions at random speeds, with some of them scaled to different sizes. When I made them stop bouncing and just "rain" down, it started to look even cooler.

So anyway, this means I should be able to make some cool games and such. Especially Defenders of Zentax. Though I thought I'd start a little simpler, and try making Asteroids. I'll render some asteroids, throw in the ship model from my flash logo, and blast away. I'll stick it up on here for you all to play with when it's done. It won't be a full game or anything like that. Just something fun, so that I can build up some more experience with ship movement and shooting and such.

I hooked my SNES back up and thought I'd play some old-school stuff. Maybe I'll finally finish Secret of Mana this time.

posted at 12:27 AM