This site spends a lot of time focusing on the graphical side of game programming, but what about the underlying math that drives game engines?  After an evening of being inspired by the marvelous Havok physics engine ^[1], I decided to bust out some old code and use it to demo classical mechanical physics.

The demo has a pretty simple premise – use the arrow keys to fly a spaceship (taken from the classic game Raptor) in all 4 directions and use spacebar to fire two “lasers.”  As always, the included VB6 source code is very carefully organized and commented.

Also, for any VB-haters out there, it’s worth noting that if the demo’s frame rate limitation box is unchecked, the code will easily run 500+ FPS on any modern machine.  Still think VB6 isn’t a viable choice for game programming?

As a bonus, the demo also includes the code for drawing an animated star field.