Using C# custom control in a game?

[Jason]

My friends and I are trying to learn about game programming. And we are most
interested in games like "raise of nations", "age of empires", "civ2 or 3".
We are thinking about developing a turn based, strategy game. I have been
doing some messing around with C# to get ideas about how to lay out data
structures?

I was just curious if any more experience programmers out there could maybe
point us in the right direction? Do those kind of games use directx or not?

Right now I created a UserControl class called "Tile" that represent 1 tile
on the board map and then I just use OnPaint to load in a .bmp file for that
given tile. Then on the main form I have an array of these "Tile" controls
to draw the board map. However I have found this to be very slow in drawing
the board? I was looking for maybe some better ideas about how I could
represent a board map. Also like the idea of when the mouse moves near the
edge of the screen i want to like shift the map to see more of it. With the
array of controls I was thinking I would like remove the left edge, shift
all the other controls over one board unit, and then add a new row on the
right....however this proved to be very costly and took a good 10-15 sec to
complete.

We are not expecting to do this over night, but we are in college and just
thought it would be a fun project to work on for a few years to see how far
we can get. If anyone can recommend any good books tailored towards turn
based 2-d game that would help to. I looked on Amazon but nothing good
really stood out.


Thanks
Jason

 

[Guest]

Hi Jason,

Just a small advice for you, as i experience it before when i am a student.

Start small, don't think too far. Beginners can't produce Age of Empires,
impossible.

1) You can use directx or opengl, up to you. Probably a bit hard, but good
pace for you to create your own 3d engine.

2) You can even mod from existing games.

3) You can use 3d engines like truevision3d, orge, or any engines as a start.

4) Make sure you know how to code c# in the .net way, not c++ or c way.
Haha! Well i still improving/learning my c#,

If you want to ask about game stuff, i would recommend 2 website:

1) http://www.gamedev.net - forums

2) http://www.igda.org - forums

For game engines:

1) http://www.truevision3d.com - well last time i used it, not bad

I am not advertising, but just helping out.

Wish you good luck.

Cheers.