Question Graphics/GDI - Overlay a transparent box and then remove as needed

[RDaugherty]

So I'm working on a type of dungeon crawler/RPG game for fun and I want to create the common "map exploration" technique. I have a PictureBox and a generic map used.

I've figured out how to use the FillRectangle and did this;

Private myGraphics As Graphics
Private myBitmap As Bitmap

myBitmap = mapBox.BackgroundImage
myGraphics = Graphics.FromImage(myBitmap)

myGraphics.FillRectangle(New SolidBrush(Color.FromArgb(180, System.Drawing.Color.Black)), 0, 0, 3000, 3000)
mapBox.Image = myBitmap
mapBox.SizeMode = PictureBoxSizeMode.StretchImage

Which works great to do the transparent box over it, but now the hang up is how do I remove lets say a 20x20 box of the FillRectangle as I need to?

Is there anyway to do this?

Thanks!

 

[jmcilhinney]

Firstly, please use Inline Code tags only for inline code. Use Code tags for blocks of code. I have edited your post appropriately.

 

[jmcilhinney]

As for the question, the answer is that you don't. You can't remove something after drawing it on an Image. You would need to start with the original image again and either draw part of it back over the bit that you want to restore or else just start again and don't draw the part you want removed.

The alternative is to not draw on the Image in the first place, but instead draw on a control containing that Image, e.g. a PictureBox. If you do it that way, the drawing gets erased every time the control gets repainted, so you need to do the drawing in the Paint event handler to restore it each time. To make changes, you simply modify the data that gets read in the Paint event handler and force a repaint. The drawing will change accordingly.