Can someone please help me by telling me approximately how much C++ I must know in order to be able to go onto learning DirectX?

None -- you can write directX in Java, C, or VB as alternatives, for example. Of course, how much you''ll have to know of some programming language is another story.

Just start simple -- following ghowland''s advice, with something like a tetris clone, or even simpler if that seems tough, like a text "Guess the Number" game.

Notwen

That''s a hard one to answer (for me at least!). I have friends that have scraped by with a minimalistic amount of knowledge, while others were quite adept before going for it. I guess the best way to answer this one would be to just go for it when you think you might be ready, if it turns out you know too little, it''s easy to find free stuff out on the net to boost your skill. While knowing "too much" (for the DX text you start reading) is never a bad thing. Just think of it this way, the more you know, the better off you''ll be in the long run. Not to mention it''ll make life easier when presented with a problem!

-Taliesin

Yes, but I''m allready into C++ and I know quite a lot of th 16-bit stuff. Now I want to go onto Win32 basics in order to learn how to create basic windows apps to be able to understand how it works so that I can understand DirectX.
So about how far do I need to go into C++ Win32 programming?

You''ll only need to know how to create a window and process the messages sen''t to it by Windows.

Hi,
you might understand DX with minimal knowledge of the WinAPI, but this doesn''t make much sense IMO, because you can''t do much stuff without it. Better learn C++ and WinAPI, when you know how to use classes, inheritance, polymorphism, the WinAPI, ... and then start learning DX.

Knowledge of Win32 programming is helpful and you will need it often in future when doing some Windows-Apps.

CU

Graphix Coding @
Skullpture Entertainment

You will need to know very little about Win32 - just the basics to set up a window. In fact, Andre' Lamothe's book, Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus, cuts right to the chase =) He wrote all you really need to know about Win32 in his book (just a small section, really).

Best regards,
Sherman

Edited by - sherman on 1/11/00 2:16:13 PM

If you want to know why the DirectX function calls look they way they do, you should probably pick up the basics of COM. Otherwise not much C++ is needed. As for the Win32 API, you don''t need much of that either, other than just the basics for launching DirectX.

Acutally for understanding DirectX, I personally found that trying the C bindings first was a lot easier.