Microsoft Visual Studio programming?

[Abraham Lincoln]

This is my first time creating a topic, so I am sorry if I lack etiquette.


I read on the Touhou Wiki that ZUN programs his (in?)famous bullet hell shooters in Microsoft Visual Studio. I'm thinking of getting that program in the future to program my Touhou fangame since I don't dare touch Danmakufu (I'm a coward). I'm just wondering how he can program all those flying colorful bullet rain spam without causing lots of frame rate lag, because one of my friends who knows a teeny little bit about programming made a pong game with ten ping pong balls on the screen and it started to lag at a ridiculous rate.

I'd like tips on starting off with programming my Touhou fangame, that's all, thank you in advance

[Voltorn]

How laggy your game depends on the amount of given memory and how many processing power you need to have. To reduce the lag, you can either enlarge the amount of given memory or simplify the algorithms and trim down the objects' size.

I'm not sure how your friend handle his shader, but he should look into the graphic libraries that he's using, they might be doing plenty unnecessary stuffs by default. If analyzing the library is too time consuming, consider changing to different libraries that are simpler, or just use a game engine to build your game until you're comfortable with directX or the GL family.

[Kaze_Senshi]

There are a lot of techniques that you can apply when programming to make your program faster and lighter, and it isn't different for a Danmaku game, for example (ignoring exceptions):

• Bullets don't need to follow realistic physics rules;
• You don't need to calculate collision of bullets between bullets;
• You don't need to calculate collision with the player if the bullet is too far away;
• You can simplify bullets hitbox to a simple circle;
• You can reuse a bullet instead of destroying it?;

Also notice that  you aren't obligated to use Visual Studio to create a game. If you want to create a Touhou game then you should learn how to program the basics (logic, loops, etc) if you don't know. After doing that try to find a game engine or a language that you enjoy and start to have fun.


?. http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/object-pool.html

[michikaze]

made a pong game with ten ping pong balls on the screen and it started to lag at a ridiculous rate.

Software rendering only that was, wasn't it? Direct3D or OpenGL will run faster even with 2d graphics.