Hiya guys :D, do you lot know where I could find the list of new Win32 functions for Windows 7? I did try MSDN and it just ended up confusing me with the talk of Direct2D on Windows 7 :S I thought Direct2D was history and combined with Direct3D!? Thanks :).

DirectDraw is history, with Direct3D taking over for high-performance drawing. Direct2D is new with DX11, and is a wrapper over Direct3D that manages to suck so much worse than just using Direct3D...just listen.

Well I just found out the Direct2D is supposed to combine GDI, GDI+ and something else which I forgot. So it isn't really for making games but for drawing using WM_PAINT... or something, sounds like something I won't be making use of.

Hmm, what about the new functions in Windows 7 then? That's what I really need to know.

Thanks :).

From the lead Direct2D developer's blog. Gee, Microsoft sure can churn out some crappy APIs.

To the OP: Writing applications in the raw Win32 API is generally discouraged these days, so I don't think Microsoft would make a big fanfare about what updates they added to it (if any). As an alternative, you might want to develop applications that target .NET, WPF, or Silverlight.

Are you talking about new functions in general? In that case this page in msdn is probably the best starting-place.

Or are you talking about DirectX 11 (which is actually also available for Windows Vista)? In that case, the DirectX 11 site on msdn is probably the best place.

On the topic of Direct2D, I'm not sure what's "worse" about it. The idea that you would take the most basic program and "ridicule" it for being complicated is just assinine. Come back after you've written a version of Photoshop in Direct2D vs. GDI and tell me which one is more complicated. As a replacement for GDI and GDI+, Direct2D is actually pretty good - it's consistent and it's powerful. And being a COM API means it can be called from more than C/C++.

Quote: Original post by CadetUmfer
DirectDraw is history, with Direct3D taking over for high-performance drawing. Direct2D is new with DX11, and is a wrapper over Direct3D that manages to suck so much worse than just using Direct3D...just listen.

Can someone summarize the issues that that podcast has with Direct2D? I find the guy's voice incredibly annoying.

Quote: Original post by Captain_Thunder
From the lead Direct2D developer's blog. Gee, Microsoft sure can churn out some crappy APIs.

That post is overcomplicated. ID2D1RenderTarget has a FillRectangle method that would simplify things. This demo app demonstrates using FillRectangle. What other issues do you have with it?

Quote: Original post by Codeka
On the topic of Direct2D, I'm not sure what's "worse" about it. The idea that you would take the most basic program and "ridicule" it for being complicated is just assinine. Come back after you've written a version of Photoshop in Direct2D vs. GDI and tell me which one is more complicated. As a replacement for GDI and GDI+, Direct2D is actually pretty good - it's consistent and it's powerful. And being a COM API means it can be called from more than C/C++.

Furthermore, D2D supports hardware-accelerated rendering whereas GDI+ does not. It can also interop with GDI and Direct3D. One conceivable scenario is rendering the GUI for your Direct3D game using Direct2D, which would let you work with things such as color/gradient/image brushes, arbitrarily-sized images, and arbitrary geometric paths.

The way I think of Direct2D is that it's a modern version of GDI+ with hardware acceleration and interoperability with GDI and Direct3D.

I also forgot to mention ID2D1RenderTarget::DrawText and DrawTextLayout which support hardware-accelerated rendering of aliased/anti-aliased/ClearType text using regular fonts. That way you can avoid nasty bitmapped fonts in games.