I´m gonna make my own tile based game using directx and A3D for sound due free MP3 decompression. Here´s some questions for you to solve I don´t ask for whole code right to me I hope you can show me the right way. 1.What is main difference between using D3D or DD to drawing engine.I confide using D3D from Gamedev´s new article. 2.When I make a game menu and buttons there(hand drawn) is it only a simple animation when i push the button and button get´s pressed efect(you know) 3.You have played HOMM3 or starcraft.In HOMM3 when I build a new building or select a troops in battle situation they get green or yellow borders again is sprite work(I there is extra frames when unit has borders activate).And from Starcraft you know green ellipse under selected character. Should I use layers and draw ellipse before character or include selected ellipse to sprite itself. 4.Collision detection If I´m making advanced collision detection for units and do polygon border not square to detect units shape I would store information of Unit borders to binaries. But I do animation should I do different borders to each animation( when character can walk to 8 direction.) 5.Can I use fresh windows mouse cursor to animated cursors. Or draw some picture(My own cursor) to place where user moves his mouse. Jaska from Finland(Sorry English isn´t my native language)

1. DD doesn''t do much more than blitting. You can add some effects to this blitting with DDBLTFX but it might not be supported by all cards. Alpha blending is not supported for DD yet.

With D3D you draw everything with textured triangles. It''s really easy to do nice special effects with alpha blending, compared to DD. You have more blendmodes, where you can for example multiply two layers together to create lightmaps.

If you do use D3D you limit your game to require hardware acceleration, as RGB emulation is not very good.

2. You can use two images. When the button is pressed you switch images, and switch back when the button is released again.

3. I see no reason why you would want to have the selection marker in the sprite. I my opinion you should do it with layers. But if you want to do like Age of Empires then you
must do it within the sprite.

4. I don''t think that the collision detection needs to be that precise that you need to animate the border. It will probably be sufficient to represent the character with a circle.

5. You can use window cursor to do animated cursors, but only if you stick with DD, as some 3D cards don''t support rendering in a window, which is needed to use the window cursor. You are probably better of drawing the cursor yourself.

6. Oh wait... There were no more questions


Good luck with your game!