Using Irrlicht in Visual Basic .NET

Newbie · Post by **Newbie** » Fri Apr 23, 2004 12:59 am

Simple question: Is there any way to use Irrlicht in VB.NET? If so, how?

ASP

disanti · Post by **disanti** » Fri Apr 23, 2004 1:14 am

Quick Answer: NO.

Reason: Irrlicht is a C++ library and cannot be used in Visual Basic. Period!

Sorry for the bad news.
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Celhtar · Post by **Celhtar** » Fri Apr 23, 2004 1:33 am

Kinda wrong, VB.NET can interface itself with any dll, using the Interop assemblies... but you'll have to write a wrapper

Celhtar · Post by **Celhtar** » Fri Apr 23, 2004 1:36 am

I meant P/Invoke

Newbie · Post by **Newbie** » Fri Apr 23, 2004 2:59 am

Yeah, I figured I'd have to write a wrapper. Do you know of any existing ones?

I'm not to good with C\C++, so could you give me an outline of what needs to be done to create a wrapper?

Thanks,
ASP

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Fri Apr 23, 2004 3:02 am

Oh, and just wanted to thank you guys (girls?) for the quick response. A lot of the forums I frequent will take a couple of weeks to respond, if you get a response at all

ASP

codechief · Post by **codechief** » Fri Apr 23, 2004 1:41 pm

At this time, it might not be possible to interface with VB.Net and other .Net languges. In future .... only Niko (and a few other determined programmers) know

I mean a port to the .Net framework that uses Managed DirectX is needed.
Writing wrappers to the existing will slow Irrlicht down, thereby loosing its edge.

There are a few books that teach game programming (even 3D game programming) with VB but as far as I can tell there is no commericial game engine based on VB....
and that says it all I think

cc

soconne · Post by **soconne** » Fri Apr 23, 2004 4:32 pm

Truevision3D is written for use with VB and is fast as heck. You can also use it with C++, C#, Delphi (i think). So it is possible and will be fast to get Irrlicht working with VB .NET

Newbie · Post by **Newbie** » Fri Apr 23, 2004 10:02 pm

"Writing wrappers to the existing will slow Irrlicht down, thereby loosing its edge."
Will it really make much diffirence? I knew it would slow it down a little, but it shouldn't slow it more than 2-5 FPS at most, should it?

If anyone can offer any advice on how to go about making a wrapper I'd appreciate it, otherwise I guess I'll go buy myself a good C\C++ book and try it myself.

ASP

Celhtar · Post by **Celhtar** » Tue Apr 27, 2004 2:55 am

Well using p/invoke you won't hae that much slowdown, and the wrapper will be written in vb if you really want it...
though i suggest you to rather use c#, its support for unmanaged code (like irrlicht) is better, due to its support of pointers.

Anyway, if you still want to try, here's a link to get you started : http://www.codeproject.com/dotnet/PInvoke.asp