Revive MS forums

[DarkSpartan4]

The only games coming from Mirage are going to be small 2d morpgs, played by a tiny (in comparison to other online games) community of dedicated people. Moving to Dx8, while having the benefit to make everything pretty and translucent, doesn't actually do much to improve the basic focus of Mirage. VB6 is still used today because it is easy, accessible and usable. Microsoft has stated that they will continue to have OS' that run VB6 for a further ten years. They wouldn't do that without a good reason. Sure, vb.net is the standard now, but is it really needed?

The thing is that Vb6 is only supported. There will be no VB6 SP7 or anything. It does not support DX9 and will never do. It does not follow the main paradigm that is used nowadays, OO. This are only a few reasons to declare it dead. I'm not saying it sux or anything. I love it(DOT) But it does not full-fits our needs anymore. DotNet is the future, and I don't see it dieing in a short period nor a very long future.
That is my opinion.

The "main paradigm" isn't always the best. Windows 95 could access the internet, and yet people that just want to do their banking on-line go out and buy Windows 7. Vb6 does everything that is needed for a basic game. If someone wants transparencies and particle effects then they can convert it themselves. I've always liked Mirage for the fact it basically has no features. You just have a lightweight template to mould to your liking. I think Matt for one hates the look of a transparent GUI in a 2D game and therefore would have no need for a feature that incorporates it. Why make people remove it when it would be far easier just to detail how to add it? Personally, I would love to see mirage in a new language, but I'm just pointing out the possible problems with this.

You don't have to use transparency if the engine uses DX8, it's just an extra option. It's really nice just to be able to use PNG's, rather than bmp's, because it saves a lot of space and you don't have to compress your graphics. PNG's also give you the option to use transparency, which is really convenient. It isn't like alpha blending was never used in 2D games in the past, either. Many SNES games had alpha blending, so why can't ours? I find DX8 to be a lot easier to use than DX7 and it gives you many advantages that can help to improve your game.