Michael Fabain DirksBB Launcher V1.00 Written by Rob Hutchinson 19/08/2001 Requires VB Runtimes. You can get these from: ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/Softlib/MSLFILES/VBRUN60sp3.EXE BBLauncher specifically needs the MSVBVM60.DLL file. Which is the VB6 runtime dll. It is included with the above runtimes and resides in <SYSTEM>\System dir, (IE C:\Windows\System\, or C:\WINNT\System\) windows now comes with the VB runtimes already installed (WinME, 2K and XP), and anyone running 95/98/NT will probably already have installed the VB runtimes or another application might have. But if you want to make sure that it definately runs on the end user machine, just drop the MSVBVM60.DLL file in the same directory as Launcher.EXE. INI Files: There are 2 INI files (Launcher.INI and Launcher_CLEAN.INI) that come with the launcher and 1 that is generated when you run BBLauncher (Settings.INI). BBLauncher uses Launcher.INI to set itself up. And generates Settings.INI on exit, depending on the options the user picks (provided they enable setting saving which is on by default). Launcher_CLEAN.INI is just a "CLEAN" version of Launcher.INI which is full of comments to help you set it up (not that its hard :)) But use Launcher_CLEAN.INI once you know what everything does. Just rename it to Launcher.INI. Programming: Its pretty simple to use in your own program. If you're writing a 2D program include "launcher2d.bb" and if you're writing a 3d program include "launcher3d.bb" in place of GraphicsXX x,x,x,x : Setbuffer BackBuffer(). Basically the include will setup the screen for you, by default the screenmode will be 640x480x16. But you can override this during development by adding a command line from the blitz menu. The params are formatted: "/<OPTIONS><PARAMS>" This: /TYPE0 /WIDTH1024 /HEIGHT768 /BPP32 /ADDIT1 Will open a 1024x768x32 screen in Fullscreen-Always, with the additional option set to true. The additional option param is /ADDITx, and to query it in your program just read the iAdditional variable, this will either be 0 or 1 depending on what the user selected. Don't forget you can disable the additional option in the INI and ignore it in code, if you like. Check out the example.bb program for usage. Well thats about it really.. Have fun. And email me if you use it in something you wrote, I`d like to see how many people would actually use it. If people are interested in it then I have a lot of features I`d like to add that I probably wouldn`t use myself but would be very useful to others. But I wont add them if noone is interested in it. So email me if you are: loki.sd@cableinet.co.uk One of the planned features is a fully customisable options section, which you could put things like "Enable WBuffer", or well, basically anything... I didn`t do this originally because it would need some more components that I didn`t want to have to include in the distro ATM BBLauncher only uses the standard VB components, and it was written purposly that way. -- Rob Hutchinson, loki.sd@cableinet.co.uk / 27181384 End