General
Issues - Application Installers
Once my
application is installed on an end user's system, how can I find out which
drive it's CD is in?
General
Issues - Compiler
Can I
Program for DirectX in Borland C++ ?
When
attempting to compile under the DirectX 8 SDK, I recieve a compiler error
stating that DirectInputCreateEx or DirectInputCreate is an undeclared
identifier.
After installing the DX 8 SDK, I
recieve the error LNK1104: Cannot Open File "d3dim.lib" when
attempting o compile my program.
Why doesn't Intellisense
offer code completion options for DX 8 interfaces under VC++?
General
Issues - Timing and Motion
How Should I
Perform Timing in my Game?
How
can I achieve a consistent rate of motion, regardless of the machine my
program is executed on?
General Issues - Application Installers
Q. Once my application is installed on an
end user's system, how can I find out which drive it's CD is in?
This can be a bit tricky at first, making it hard to insure
reliable results. Basically, you need to properly enumerate all of the
drives on the system, and determine which drives are actually CD-ROM drives.
Then you can get the volume labels for the available CDs on the system and
compare them to the volume label of the required CD, notifying the user to
intervene if there is no match. To find out more, read this article
with source code which includes a disk search routine that can easily be
integrated into your existing or projects.
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General Issues - Compiler
Q. Can I Program for DirectX in
Borland C++ ?
Yes, support for Borland C++ is provided in the DirectX SDK.
To find out more about setting up DirectX support in Borland C++, see Using
DirectX In Borland C++ by Mikael Lundberg.
Q. When attempting to compile under
the DirectX 8 SDK, I recieve a compiler error stating that
DirectInputCreateEx or DirectInputCreate is an undeclared identifier.
Compiling code for previous versions of DirectInput under
DirectX 8, you must define a constant specifying the required version support
prior to including dinput.h. Define
DIRECTINPUT_VERSION to be equal to 0x300,
0x0500, or 0x0700,
like this:
#define DIRECTINPUT_VERSION 0x0700
#include <dinput.h>
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General Issues - Timing and Motion
Q. How Should I Perform Timing in my
Game?
Overall, you will want to avoid the use of timer callbacks,
because of the latency inherent to their use of the message queue for
notification. Instead, your best performance will be achieved by
overriding the application's message loop and making use of timer functions that
poll the system for the current time. For more information on this
subject, see Writing the
Game Loop and the associated article Selecting
Timer Functions.
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Q. How can I achieve a consistent rate
of motion, regardless of the machine my program is executed on?
To insure consistent performance, your application must
calculate object position on a frame by frame basis, based upon a measure
of elapsed time between frames. For information on how to implement this,
as well as information on applying realistic acceleration and gravity to game
titles, read our article on Steady
Motion.
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