Windows 7, TV6.3, and VB 6

[peteofborg]

I have several projects that have been laying dormant for several years and interested in upgrading them. They were written in VB6 with older versions of TrueVision3D. I cannot get 6.3 to install on Windows 7. I attempted to convert to VB.NET but have tons of errors, maxed out at 102 errors. The Microsoft upgrading tool sucks.

The project is my RPG maker program. It would be a major undertaking to convert the program to run with TV65 and VB.NET. But it is probably quicker than trying to convert it to another language or engine.  I has over 10,000 lines of code written in VB6 code and took years to develop. I am going to keep it to Visual Basic programming frame. That's what I know and what the program was written in.

[asia]

I think the trick is to remember that the dx8vb is not included in the windows 7 and/or the Directx11 it uses.
Than install it and than run a registration similar to the following (I used a bat file):

Code:

regsvr32 "c:\windows\system32\truevision3d.dll" /u
regsvr32 "c:\windows\system32\dx8vb.dll" /u
regsvr32 "c:\windows\system32\dx8vb.dll"
regsvr32 "c:\windows\system32\truevision3d.dll"

Let me know if it works
Ciao

[micmanos]

You've just boarded the roller coaster from hell. I don't know how you've done it in vb6 but expect a lot of slow and painful re-writing in Net.

[peteym5]

I eventually got it to work in VB.NET 2008 with TV6.3. I may be looking to convert to 6.5 in the near future. I need find a few working samples and see how they are coded, I cannot just do a find/replace to convert 6.3 to 6.5, its more complicated than that.

During the porting process I decided to take advantage of the fact that any updates have not been released for over 3 years. One issue that I had in the past is that I had to maintain backward compatibility with files the program generates. As far as I know, no one made any major games with my RPG maker. I went through and removed somethings I thought may confuse or create extra work for people. I try to make an effort to make things simple for the end user, which is one of the premises I had in mind since the beginning.

[peteym5]

You've just boarded the roller coaster from hell. I don't know how you've done it in vb6 but expect a lot of slow and painful re-writing in Net.

That is an understatement. Microsoft broke backward compatibility with VB.NET from VB5, VB6. I've read articles and a few suggested that Microsoft should not be still calling in Visual Basic. It is almost a whole other version of Basic. I cannot say VB.NET is really better than Visual Basic 6 and prior versions.

I got the program to work for the most part, there are still a few bugs that pop up here and there because of the conversion.

One major control still remaining for VB6 is the " FlexGridControl " that is used in the RM Builder that edits the data. I intend to port over to DataGridView, but I have to experiment with setting it up in a separate vb program so I don't screw up something that is working right now.

[Fusion32]

finally had to bite the bullet and ?upgrade? to Win7.... VB6 is now quite happily running in 7 without any apparent problems. Getting 6.3 to install was quite straight forward once i registered the dx8vb.dll. In fact, it is easier then installing Office97 on 7.
The things that are important are:
1 - turn off / disable UAC
2 - turn off the fancy themes / silverlight etc
3: install dx8vb.dll with regsvr32 (you know the drill) followed by tvsdk (that batch file of asia's works well) and run everything as Administrator.

my reasons for sticking with VB6 are simple - 30k+ lines of code, 46 forms,13 modules etc...
but microsoft is provideing vb6 runtime support for VB6 at least up to Win 8, so I feel that by upgrading the UI to win 7 via resource files etc is going to extend the lifecycle....

[FredLevy]

It's really gives an outstanding idea that is very helpful for all the people.