I''m about to buy some books..I was thinking about getting Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus. Now I was looking around and saw books on directx and direct3d. What''s the difference? Is one a prerequisite to the other? Or is one of these or both covered in Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus?

OK, I found a little article and Direct3D is the most important part of DirectX. So I guess learning directx is a prerequisite to getting to a specific part? Any recommendations on a comprehensive DirectX book covering all of the parts of DirectX?

I suggest the following books for learing DirectX (excluding Direct3d, but I''ll explain why that is a bit later):

''Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus''
''Inside DirectX''
''DirectX Complete''

You only need to buy one, not all three. Any of those three will get you where you need to go with DirectX.
I would not choose Direct3d if I were building a 3d game. I suggest going for OpenGL because it is much, much easier in my opinion. If you want to get a free online book on OpenGL, look in the reference section. Direct3d is much harder than OpenGL, and they can do the same thing.

GO LEAFS GO!