I''m not extremely experienced with programming yet. I''m still a high school student who does this more as a hobby, only it''s a blood-thirsty life-consuming hobby that I''m obsessed with and some day plan on basing a career around. I''ve been using DJGPP and Allegro to make games (nice little open source tools), and I''ve made nothing more than mere Nibbles and Pong and Tetris clones, and a nifty little puzzle game called Blox. I''m still way into the learning phase, and I dare not touch anything having anything to do with 3D programming until I understand a lot more about programming in general, and I should probably wait until after I''ve taken trig too. Right now I don''t even want to do any 3D programming, but I do want to move onto bigger and better things, like MSVC++ and DirectX. I''m nice and equipped with Visual Studios 6 and I''ve downloaded the DirectX 8.1 SDK and all. This is where the damning of Microsoft comes into play. No more DirectDraw? Ok, I know I can use DX7 and have all the DirectDraw that I want, and I was going to do that, only the DX8 SDK doesn''t have any DirectDraw documentation at all, and I can''t find one online anywhere. There are plenty of DirectDraw tutorials (this site even has quite a few), but they all expect you to at least know something, and having the ability to look up stuff can be very helpful. I read an article about using Direct3D 8 to make 2d graphics (somewhere at gamesultra.com I think). The only problem is it basically just gives me a bunch of sample code and tells me it works. Since I don''t even fully grasp how DirectX works, much less Direct3D, or anything having to do with 3d programming at all, it doesn''t really help me to learn very much. And Direct3D was designed for 3d graphics anyway. How would you wise game programming people suggest I switch from the little newbie world of DOS and simple, easy, logical, game programming libraries to the big bad world of complicated Windows programming, DirectX, and the lack of only two dimensions? I''ve flipped through most of the articles on this site (well, the ones having anything to do with starting with DirectX), and they don''t seem to help very much (though I do get a little from them). Ha! How''s that for an introductory post? flucknugget

quote: Original post by flucknugget
I'm still way into the learning phase, and I dare not touch anything having anything to do with 3D programming until I understand a lot more about programming in general, and I should probably wait until after I've taken trig too.

While I admire your patience and your efforts to try not to move too fast (the exact opposite of most people ), you may want to instead focus your efforts in teaching yourself trigonometry and 3D geometry (trig. isn't as bad as calculus, so don't worry, heh).

However, since you don't want to learn a 3D graphics API, maybe you should just stick with Allegro? It isn't any worse than DirectDraw (doesn't it use DirectDraw in Windows?), although it does simplify a lot of things you should eventually learn to do for yourself. Solely complaining about Microsoft (whatever its motives may be) doesn't normally help your situation. I'm no fan of Microsoft, so I'm not just saying that due to a personal stance .

[Resist Windows XP's Invasive Production Activation Technology!]

Edited by - Null and Void on December 17, 2001 8:29:09 PM

all the interfaces are still there and usable. for docs, just look on the internet you''re bound to find them.

You can also just use the D3DX8 sprite interfaces.

You can download the directx 7 documentation from msdn.microsoft.com . Which will give you access to the ddraw tutorials and docs. Also if you search through DX8 you''ll find that MS has wrapped DDraw up in a file called ddutil.h and .cpp . This will get you up and running with ddraw, it includes functionality for loading bitmaps, doing font code, creating full screen surfaces, and creating windowed surfaces. If you look at the DDraw samples that come with dx this will get you started.

Onto the reason ddraw isn''t in dx8....Easy enough, in the past few years has 2d technology advanced at all? NO. So there was no need to update it! Nvidia, Ati, 3dfx, and all those other vid card makers are all focusing on 3d. So no new features have been added to 2d hardware, no alpha blending in 2d, no rotation in 2d, not even 64bit image depth. Absolutely nothing! So there was no need to update that specific part of the API. Perhaps it''ll re-appear in 9 but I suspect it''s more or less going to be 2d wrappers for d3d interfaces.

Well, the full DirectX 7.0a SDK is at http://download.microsoft.com/download/win98SE/DXSDK/7.0a/W9X/EN-US/dx7adxf.exe

Maybe that helps a bit. Although it''s a huge download.

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quote: Original post by flucknugget
I''m not extremely experienced with programming yet. I''m still a high school student who does this more as a hobby, only it''s a blood-thirsty life-consuming hobby that I''m obsessed with and some day plan on basing a career around. I''ve been using DJGPP and Allegro to make games (nice little open source tools), and I''ve made nothing more than mere Nibbles and Pong and Tetris clones, and a nifty little puzzle game called Blox. I''m still way into the learning phase, and I dare not touch anything having anything to do with 3D programming until I understand a lot more about programming in general, and I should probably wait until after I''ve taken trig too. Right now I don''t even want to do any 3D programming, but I do want to move onto bigger and better things, like MSVC++ and DirectX. I''m nice and equipped with Visual Studios 6 and I''ve downloaded the DirectX 8.1 SDK and all. This is where the damning of Microsoft comes into play. No more DirectDraw?

Ok, I know I can use DX7 and have all the DirectDraw that I want, and I was going to do that, only the DX8 SDK doesn''t have any DirectDraw documentation at all, and I can''t find one online anywhere. There are plenty of DirectDraw tutorials (this site even has quite a few), but they all expect you to at least know something, and having the ability to look up stuff can be very helpful. I read an article about using Direct3D 8 to make 2d graphics (somewhere at gamesultra.com I think). The only problem is it basically just gives me a bunch of sample code and tells me it works. Since I don''t even fully grasp how DirectX works, much less Direct3D, or anything having to do with 3d programming at all, it doesn''t really help me to learn very much. And Direct3D was designed for 3d graphics anyway. How would you wise game programming people suggest I switch from the little newbie world of DOS and simple, easy, logical, game programming libraries to the big bad world of complicated Windows programming, DirectX, and the lack of only two dimensions? I''ve flipped through most of the articles on this site (well, the ones having anything to do with starting with DirectX), and they don''t seem to help very much (though I do get a little from them).

Ha! How''s that for an introductory post?

flucknugget

Just use SDL.



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Resist Windows XP''s Invasive Production Activation Technology!

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Woah, thanks everyone. I got more of a response than I thought I would. Null and Void, I have pre-cal next semester, which starts in like a week, and that covers trig, so I''ll be in 3d programming pretty soon. Thanks for the help everyone. Yeah, I think I''ll try and learn DirectDraw now. I would continue with Allegro, but I want to get used to Windows programming and DirectX, for when I do decide to start doing 3d stuff.

flucknugget

(Or you could use AllegGL)

Hey Flucknugget I cant help but ask you this, have you ever used something called MZX??? If so I used to talk on digitalmzx.net months back. Just wondering I was Domon at that time.

Jeff D



Suffered seven plagues, but refused to let the slaves go free. ~ Ross Atherton

Or maybe, youre just a frigging impatient stupid ass highschool kid who needs to start learning how to learn!


Especially because youre so damn impatient you didnt even read the SDK docs on "Whats new in DIrectX 8" or look at the top of . Because If you had, you would have known to use a define statement to set the DX version to 7, if you wanted DDraw!

So b4 flaming MS, look at yourself and say "Whos being the stupid bastard? MS...or me?"

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The sad thing about artificial intelligence is that it lacks artifice and therefore intelligence.