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The Smack The Santa Control Form
The source code in Listing 1 shows the code that VB.NET automatically generates as you create the control form. You can copy and paste it over your existing form code or create the form from scratch yourself. Although long, most of the code is self-explanatory. Here's the short explanation.
The control form displays three slider controls with which the player can set:
- the number of rows
- the number of columns
- the speed at which the Santas pop up.
A fourth control, the "Smack Him" button, handles the game generation. I'll describe the game generation process in more detail throughout the rest of this tutorial. Figure 2 shows the control form in the VS.NET designer.
 Figure 2: The Smack the Santa control form in the VS.NET designer. At runtime, a player moves the sliders to control the number of Santas on the game form and the speed at which they appear and disappear. The two large buttons containing the Santa images are invisible at runtime.
One thing that isn't immediately apparent from looking at Listing 1 is where the Santa images come from. The two large buttons on the control form hold the images. One button's Image property references the normal Santa image, and the other the "smacked" Santa image. The buttons are invisible (Visible=False) so they don't appear when you run the application. I found the easiest way to create buttons on a dynamic form was to create them on the static form and then programmatically copy the entire control to the new buttons when they instantiate. If you create the form yourself, you'll need to select the images for those two buttons manually. I've included the images with the source code.
In addition to the automatic code, the form contains some event handlers for the sliders. When you move the sliders, these handlers display the results in some text boxes to the right of each of the three controls. The #Region...#End Region lines don't execute, but they let you collapse the code in the IDE and keep them out of the way.
#Region "Event Handlers"
Private Sub tbRows_Scroll(ByVal sender As _
System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs)
Handles tbRows.Scroll
lblRows.Text = tbRows.Value
End Sub
Private Sub tbColumns_Scroll(ByVal sender As _
System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs)
Handles tbColumns.Scroll
lblColumns.Text = tbColumns.Value
End Sub
Private Sub tbSpeed_Scroll(ByVal sender As _
System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs)
Handles tbSpeed.Scroll
Select Case tbSpeed.Value
Case 1 : lblSpeed.Text =
"Stuck in Chimney"
Case 2 : lblSpeed.Text =
"Full with Cookies"
Case 3 : lblSpeed.Text =
"Sneaky Elf"
Case 4 : lblSpeed.Text =
"Riding the Reindeer"
Case 5 : lblSpeed.Text = "On Fire!"
End Select
End Sub
#End Region
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Introduction 
The Smack The Santa Control Form 
Global Variable Declarations 
The Popup Mechanism 
Smack That Bad Boy! 
