Hi, I just bought Tricks for the Windows Game Programming Gurus, and it came with directX 6.1 SDK... Now my question is, If I already have directX 8 installed does this include the directX 8 SDK or is that separate? Is it free to download? or should i install 6.1 so it works better with the book? Thanks - Free Your Mind -

The DirectX SDK is free, it is 100+ mb and you can get it at www.microsoft.com/directx then click developer on the left.
And DirectX, for a while now, is backwards compatible... It has all the DirectX 6.1 drivers so...

Edited by - redigjohn on December 21, 2001 9:44:56 AM

All the DirectX APIs are backwards compatable. It is better to have DirectX 8.1 installed to develop with, even if you are starting out learning the old interface(which is a little easier). The only problem you are going to run into is when he says "check the SDK docs..." for something, you may not find what he is talking about. What I did was download the DirectX 7 SDK and took the help docs from there, so I could use them as a reference with the book. Then i downloaded DirectX 8.1 and compile with that.(It helps that I have a cable connection which makes it go much faster).

EDIT: never really answered your question. No the SDK does not come with DirectX you install to play games. Go here, then go to the Developer section to download the SDK.

---
Make it work.
Make it right.
Make it fast.

Edited by - CaptainJester on December 21, 2001 9:46:46 AM

you''ve to download the SDK, it''s free as far as I know.

rapso->greets();

Hey,

I thought the DirectX 8.1 SDK does not include DirectDraw, does it? I use the DirectX 7 SDK, cause I thought M$ had eliminated DirectDraw with DX8...
And since "Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus" makes heavy use of DirectDraw, I guess it will be quite tricky to compile the examples in the book, etc...

Please correct me if I'm wrong


Cheers,
NachoKun

Edited by - NachoKun on December 22, 2001 2:34:52 AM

Microsoft did not include DirectDraw in DX8 because it HAS NOT CHANGED. Just continue to have the directX7 directory in your include and lib paths and you can still use it.