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How to make tiles in Visual Basic 2005

Hi,

I am trying to do a simple tile-based game in Visual Basic 2005. In VB6 I allways used BitBlt, but in this thread:

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1782615&SiteID=1

I was advised to use the drawimage function instead. I use two pictureboxes, one with the set of tiles, and one that is visible in the game. My problem is, using the drawimage, is that when I put the second tile in the destination picturebox, the first tile disappears. Also, If I at designtime put an image in the picturebox, It also disappears when I put in the first tile.

How can I keep the "backgroundpicture" and the previous tile when adding the additional tiles?

Samus Thursday, June 28, 2007 11:33 AM

I think I got the solution, the new image in my code is only to be called the first time. This works for me:

Code Snippet

Dim x, y As Byte

PboxPlayarea.Image = New Bitmap(180, 180)

Dim G As Graphics = Graphics.FromImage(PboxPlayarea.Image)

For y = 0 To 10

For x = 0 To 10

G.DrawImage(PBoxCopy.Image, x * 18, y * 18, New Rectangle(19, 0, 18, 18), GraphicsUnit.Pixel)

Next x

Next y

Why is is bad to use a picturebox?

Samus Thursday, June 28, 2007 1:04 PM

Using Graphics.DrawImage() was good advice. However, don't use PictureBox. Just draw on a Panel or the form with the Paint event. You'd paint your tiles one by one using different x and y coordinates. For example:

private void Form1_Paint(object sender, PaintEventArgs e) {
// Example of 8 x 8 grid of tiles, using a resource for the tile image
Image img = Properties.Resources.SampleTile;
for (int x = 0; x < 8; ++x) {
for (int y = 0; y < 8; ++y) {
e.Graphics.DrawImage(img, x * img.Width, y * img.Height);
}
}
}

nobugz Thursday, June 28, 2007 12:08 PM

Use
Dim G As Graphics = PBoxPlayarea.CreateGraphics()
instead of
Dim G As Graphics = Graphics.FromImage(PBoxPlayarea.Image)

Bruno_1 Thursday, June 28, 2007 12:10 PM