but I''m not exactly sure what DirectX and Open gL are. i read about them all the time, and that certian games ae made with them, but Im so stupid I have to ask: what are they for, and what is the difference? forgive my stupidity, but Im new, but willing to learn

wait, why are there two forums of the same thing??

There aren''t two forums, you just posted twice.

On to the question: OpenGL and DirectX are APIs (a set of functions/objects/variables that can be used by the programmer without having to know how they work internally). Both of these APIs are used to provide a layer of abstraction between your computers hardware and the game being written, that way the programmers don''t have to write code to work with every video card there is, they just write code for DirectX/OpenGL. OpenGL is a graphics API used mostly for 3D graphics. It is an open standard that can ported to platforms other than windows (Mac, Unix, etc). DirectX is a API suite from Microsoft (meaning it only runs on Windows [though there is a Linux effort], which has a component called Direct3D (and the depreciated DirectDraw) for doing graphics like OpenGL, but also includes things like sound (DirectSound), input like mouse and joysticks (DirectInput), and even multiplayer (DirectPlay).

Your next question may be, which is better, Direct3D or OpenGL? Don''t ask this question (it just leads to flamewars), instead read the article Direct3D vs. OpenGL: Which API to Use When, Where, and Why.

ban him! ban him!!

its like an add-on to the language you code in.
DirectX is more then just graphics but OpenGL is just graphics.

Lets give you a minor history of game development. A short time ago before the days of Windows 95 most of the Personal computers on the market used the DOS operating system. Durring these days developers who wished to make games had to program the hardware specificially. Which created a problem because there was not just 1 video card manufacturer, Trident, Matrox, ATI, and a number of others. And this was all because there were no real "standards" so each hardware manufacturer would develop their own implementation of other hardware manufacturers features. This ment when you wanted to play a game you had to go through a configuration program and select your EXACT video card or the game may not run. This also required the developers to put in alot of extra time programming their games to work with a number of video cards. Now this also had to be done for your sound cards, and joysticks. Needless to say this took alot of time to maintain and expand on. Now when windows 3.1 and Window 95 came out, microsoft introduced to the developers what they called an API or "Application Programming Interface". These API''s handle talking directly to the hardware so that the programmers don''t need to. The API irradicates the need for developers to write specific code for all the hardware which the API interfaces with.

OpenGL is a graphics specific API so it really only talks to the video hardware.

DirectX is a multipurpose API, it can talk to the sound card, the video card, the Mouse/Keyboard/Joystick.