Baroody's Game Development Site

A Website to help you program computer games

Step 1:  The Form

The first thing to do is to set up the form.  Start up Visual Basic and create a new "Standard.exe" file.  Select Form 1 and change the following properties as indicated:

Property

Value

(Name)

frmSlider
Caption Slider
Control Box False
BackColor &H00FF0000&
BorderStyle 1-Fixed Single
Height 3330
Width 3255

It should be pretty clear what each of these properties does.  Your form should look like this:

Slider Form - Step 1


Now, you need to add all the puzzle pieces.  Set this up as an array of command buttons (if you forget how to do this, see the Tic Tac Toe tutorial, where we created an array of image controls).  You can use your own properties for these, or you can use the following properties, which will give you something that looks just like my game.

Property

Value

(Name)

cmdDisplayArray()
Caption 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 (depending on which position you're doing)
Font MS Sans Serif, Bold, Size 24
Height 975
Index 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 (depending on which position you're doing - should be the same as the caption)
Width 1095

After completing this step, your form should look something like this:

Slider Form - Step 2

Now, you need to add the menus.  They're pretty straight forward, so I'll just show you what they look like here...you can figure out how to add them using the menu editor.

Slider Form - Step 3 - Options Menu

Slider Form - Step 4 - Help Menu

That's it for the form!  If you're ready to start the code, then click here or select Step 2: Setting Up on the navigation bar.