Epic Boredum (VB)

[greasontim]

okay to start this out
I'm bored enough that I'm using VB to create a old style point and click RPG, yes you heard me right.
I'm using VB 2008 Express

Okay now for my problem.
Can someone please help me out on this.

I'm trying to use a access database to store player items in maybe in, their race, class and other things such as monsters.
But my problem is I can't figure out how to connect it to a access database and get it to work.

PS. Long time no see

[Jackolantern]

Welcome back! You should check out ADO.NET. This is Microsoft's major database access technology for .NET. If you look at some ADO.NET tutorials, you will learn how to connect to various databases and find out where to find data adapters for any database you care to use! As a tip, I would avoid getting into Entity Framework (ADO.NET's LINQ-compatible ORM implementation) for a basic game, at least until you get a handle on standard ADO.NET.

[greasontim]

so ADO.net works with VB 2008 Express?
and reason for coming back is I have a programming class (Though for some things I know more than the teacher does....)
But ya choose to make a crap little rpg with VB so I came here to get help once a while when needed.

[Jackolantern]

ADO.NET is part of the .NET platform, not a separate technology, so it works wherever any .NET language works (including any Express version)

[greasontim]

Alright, still gonna look into this but I have it going from txt files right now.
I may upload just so those that want to, can help me hunt for bugs.

[PKDemon]

Alright, still gonna look into this but I have it going from txt files right now.
I may upload just so those that want to, can help me hunt for bugs.

i will be glad to help with bugs i also use vb.net and vb6

[Jackolantern]

That will probably work best for a single-player RPG (didn't realize that about your game before). SQL Server and other full RDB solutions are really meant for the back-end since forcing a client to setup a full db system is a quick way to piss off potential players lol. Either using a flat file (text file) or a lightweight db intended for client distribution such as SQLite would probably work out best!

[greasontim]

I'm going to be encrypting all the letters and numbers in the text files into unicode symbols just so players can't change their character stats around before I release a test run alpha version of the character creation. (Though the shop works half ass and the battle system is crappy)
Hoping those that try it out can give me some ideas for more classes and races, I'll be posting up the stuff for the races and classes for balancing if you want to create a race/class for me to add in.

Also does anyone know how I can encrypt each line or the character files or make them so people can't change them?

[PKDemon]

i would look around on www.pscode.com to see what you can come up with i really never got into encryption and things

[greasontim]

I was told you can use a .zip as well for the same thing so I may look into that instead