Ideas for linking to videos in-game?

[MikeLeeSon]

I'm looking for suggestions on how to input a really unique aspect into my game.

The idea is that the game's an educational writing MMO in which players are participating within a traditional-style MMO, but they are also given crafting classes that teach them writing skills, and they are also given quests to help them practice each skill. While the idea is that the teacher will teacher the content first, I want to give players the ability to learn the content via the game alone (plus I don't want kids to have to wait for a lesson before playing the game and going to the next level). Here's where the idea of inputting a hyperlink into the quest textbox comes in - and thus my question.

What I'm hoping to do is somehow link a player to a video outside the game - or other comparable ideas. Originally I wanted to actually insert a video into the quest textbox, but I don't think that's possible (although, if it is, I'd love to do that too if you could explain how). Because I don't think that's possible, I decided to somehow input the link within the text, and then have the students click the link inside the quest box, then have the link open up on their browser. The problem with this idea is that I was told you can't input hyperlinks into vb6.

Another suggestion that was made was to use a windows api that opens the browser from the command prompt, but it was also expressed that this idea would take a toll on the performance.

Of course, there's always the idea of just typing the link into the quest textbox and then having the student copy/paste into their browser, but I'd like to make it a  little more user friendly than that.

I'm open to all ideas - and don't be afraid to suggest something that's rather creative…

[Matt]

For inserting a video into your application, you can use the windows media player component in VB6\. It's not difficult to use. There might be a better way, but this is the only one I know of.

As for the "opening of the browser", you can use this. It opens up a url with your default browser.

```
Shell ("cmd /c start http://www.eclipseorigins.com")
```

[MikeLeeSon]

Nice - thanks! How will this affect performance?

[Matt]

It won't affect the performance of your game. The performance of your pc will be affected, but no more than regularly opening your browser and watching the video.

[Yuko]

How about someone linking stuff in chat, like if someone linked google in my game's chat, could I make something like that to take what they said and put it in link form like that?

[Matt]

You'd have to use the MicrosoftInternetControls control apparently. Try looking it up on google.

[Yuko]

Sounds easy, but boring, I'll check it out if I feel like it's a necessity sometime.