DXWrapper project Announced!!

I don''t know if you know, and anyone cans correct me if I am wrong, but most everyone writes something similar to a DX wrapper when they make a game. Its easier for people to just learn the DX API and then write their own wrappers than have to learn a whole different wrapper, some of which make the matter of directx twice as hard. Look at CDX.
I am currently working on my own DircectDraw wrappers. However, I am making it so that anyone who has used WIN32 could easily just use these. I have no references to DX except when I offer access functions for the DX objects. Much easier that way. I am even trying to simplify the Lock/Unlock mechanism. It was REALLY hard to figure out why that was necessary when I was learning DX.

I sugest that when you make your wrappers, go the way of the wise and minimize any reference to DX terminology or design. I think it is a construed mess anyway.

Sorry if I rambled on.



Brent Robinson
"What if this is as good as it gets?"

well I think a wrapper set should only be designed for ppl who dont know DirectX.
Bcz, the classes set is made in order to make the developer''s life easier and allow him to code faster.
I find win32 API even more obscure and odd than directx if someone can learn the win32api he can manage to learn basic dx terminology

I think the reason many people make their own GDK''s instead of using premade ones is that its easier to understand and use your own GDK (it jst takes a bit of work to setup )

Anyway, I too am writing a set of DirectX wrapper classes which are loosley based on the CDX classes and functionality. I had a couple reasons for doing this instead of using the CDX classes.

1) I couldn''t find any decent documentation on the functions. The help files where quite incomplete, and the actual source code is poorly documented.

2) It relies on DirectX. I have a friend who is an avid Mac user and wants to work with me on games. He wants to be able to port them to the Mac, though, using OpenGL and RAVE, but I want to use DirectX under windows (b/c it seems to be the way to go.) So I''m trying to design my classes to be as OS and API independent as possible. My functions and objects are pretty high level so that they provide a common interface no matter what API is being used, but they can be optimized fairly easily for any specific API. My hope is, that when its done it will be about as simple to get multi-platform versions of games as including a different set of source files in the project and recompliling... We''ll see.

3) If I design my own directX wrapper, i get exactly what I want... nothing more, nothing less. For example, I don''t think I''m going to have any Lock/Unlock mechanisms in the final interface b/c all of the simple drawing instuctions and text output can be done better with D3D and bitmapped fonts I think, so there is no need to Lock/Unlock surfaces.

Just my 2cents, btw, I hope your project goes well

I could use some help!
Join my project....

CDX''s stuff are old and 2D. I plan to have my 2D classes accelarated by 3D.

I''d be happy to help out. I just finished coding some basic bitmap loading and drawing function for my engine Now my I can see little bitmaps on the screen! (No palette support, scaling, clipping, or anything useful yet, but enough to get a little picture to bounce around the screen )

If you need any advice I''d be happy to help out. I''m not sure about releasing my code yet b/c, although its pretty clean and clear, it tends to get a little messy as I add features to my engine and end up sticking in temporoary patches to just get things working and then go back and smooth them out in the end...

I''m pretty sure I''ll release the source when I''m done, or at least when I get to a point where the GDK is a lot more stable, but for now I have a lot of work to do on it (and now that spring break is over, I hope I''ll have the time to do that work )

Feel free to post/email me questions, though... I check both several times a day! (I''m not obsessed... really... )

Well i just finished a testing an initialization component that wraps ID3DContext, IDirectDraw7, IDirect3D7 and IDirect3DDevice7.
And a component that wraps the IDirectDrawSurface7.
And im now testing those basic components before i continue....