The Graphics MagicianTM
Direct Express
Add Graphics, Animation, and Sound to your Visual C++ programs
Download
Documentation
for Visual C++
2005 Edition
(current version)
Old Version:
Documentation and Sample Programs
for Visual C++ 6.0
You're no longer limited to learning C++ with "text-only" applications!
The catch about learning programming is that in the beginning you are usually stuck with pretty boring text stuff. You create "console applications" with a window full of white text on a black background.
Try to do add some flashy graphics or sound to your programs? The answer usually is "you have to learn Windows programming for that". And THEN "you have to learn to use DirectX". Guess what? That's usually two additional courses beyond your first basic programming course!These days I teach college-level programming courses, and I don't want to tell my students "wait a year, and then we'll show you the fun stuff." Sometimes I'm a big fan of instant gratification.
Use graphics, animation, and sound in "beginner's C++" programs
With Graphics Magician, you can use graphics, animation, and sound in a beginning C++ programming course. Graphics Magician programs look like console applications that you'd normally write, but we add all kinds of extra graphics and sound commands. We hide all the Windows and DirectX programming from you until you're ready to take that big step.
Just download Graphics Magician and start a "Graphics Magician Application" in Microsoft Visual C++ and you can write programs with color and graphics and sound right away. And you can even use the free Visual C++ Express Edition that you can download from microsoft.com!
Click the Documentation and Download links at left to get started!
The original Graphics Magician
In the 1980's, I co-authored and published the original Graphics Magician for the Apple II computer. It was the easiest way to add graphics and animation to programs written in Applesoft Basic or 6502 Assembly language, and it become one of the best-selling software packages for many years, and was licensed by virtually every software publisher of the time who produced games and educational software.
What made it cool is that almost anyone could create programs with fancy graphics with just a few lines of Basic. It was a great, fun way to learn programming.
That's pretty much ancient history now. The Smithsonian Museum of American History actually requested a copy for their archives. No kidding.
These days I teach computer programming in college. I wanted a way to get beyond the text-based programs of most CS1 courses, yet keep it simple enough for a first course in programming. So I adapted the philosophy of the old Graphics Magician, and created something of a similar nature that works with Microsoft Visual C++ and DirectX. No attempt was made to duplicate features of the original. Of course, back then we were limited to six colors and a speaker that could make a "clicking" sound, and an 8-bit processor that ran at 1Mhz. Times have changed, just a little....
Have fun!!!
- Mark Pelczarski
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