DirectX 8

Well, it would depend on how much you want to learn, for graphics opengl is the best to learn for a beginner, but that leaves everything that is in a game that is not graphics to being at seperate apis from each other. DirectX is all of what goes into a game... but the fact is that it is usually extremely confusing to a beginner and direct3d is a pain all on its own.. maybe try learning both for a little while and judge for yourself which you can do better on and then you can go from there. Also witchdoctor has a good site on directx and microsoft''s sdk has sample code if you are willing to download the 100+ mb of it..

sorry about the last post.. it is witchlord that is the DirectX page.. sorry for any inconvenience..

Just a friendly reminder that you only need to post in one forum, not three. That said... I don''t think DirectX is so hard to learn (I don''t know about Direct3D though; it is rather infamous, hehe), and LaMothe''s book Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus is a great tool to get you started.

I haven''t tried OpenGL yet so I can''t compare the two... which is probably a good thing since DirectX vs. OpenGL posts tend to lead to chaos and bloodshed.

-Ironblayde
 Aeon Software

The following sentence is true.
The preceding sentence is false.

I''ve been just like you, having to choose between DX and Opengl. I didn''t understand the D3D tutorials that came with the SDK, so I stuck with Opengl (which was fine, but I''m pretty sure DX will prevail in the long run so I''d rather learn that.) Anyways I just downloaded the DX8 SDK and it''s pretty easy (just reading the first few tutorials anyways.) I''d reccommend downloading the DX SDK, and see if you understand any of the D3D tutorials. If you don''t then just head to Nehe''s and learn opengl until you can program good enough for DirectX. Or of course you may stick with Opengl

Learn both of them. That way you will be able to understand the information on the web. I always find good OpenGL articles that explain some non-api ideas that can be implemented in direc3d as well and vice versa. Remember that these apis don''t create your whole game instead think of them as a low level rendering objects. Basically a vertex crunchers that''s all. The game consists of other more important aspects non-api related like visibility culling with portals, bsp trees, quad-oct trees, collision detection, artificial intelligence, creation of world and objects (OpenGL can be used here), etc. Create modules that talk to whatever graphic api you choose to use. Remeber that each year directx goes through major rewrites so it would be a good idea to put this functionality into a dx object and let your game objects talk to it. That way you could also create an OpenGL object and switch between them, compare the performance and basically give users the choice which rendering api they could use.

Ahem, he''s talking about DX8. Have you actually read the DX8 SDK yet? Have you seen the improvement to Direct3D in _ease of use_? I don''t know if you have, but make sure your information stays up to date please.

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Please state the nature of the debugging emergency.

sharewaregames.20m.com

Direct3D 8 has some lovely new features which unfortunately OpenGL doesn''t have. Such as automatic loading and parsing of X files.

The initialisation has lost all that rubbish with creating primary and back surfaces and setting clippers and stuff, it''s done for you.

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Please state the nature of the debugging emergency.

sharewaregames.20m.com

Isn't it D3DX8 that handles the loading of X files? If it is, then D3DX7 had that too - so its nowt special. Don't really like X files either

I imagine that they're won't be a static D3DX8 lib for Borland compilers either, so you'll have to use MSVC++

Only 2:20 to go before I get to play with it!

Edited by - Pauly on November 11, 2000 4:12:21 AM

Can''t you convert the D3DX lib with IMPLIB??

Only 2:50 to go before I can play

Implib imports librarys from dlls d3dx doesnt have a dll and the converter for libs is broken.

Edited by - crazy-vasey on November 12, 2000 7:52:12 AM

Last week I''ve seen a page where you could download a D3DX lib for the borland compiler.
I''ll try searching that page again...

There is the new IDirectXFile interface for loading X files. DIrect3D also supports automatic support for windowed mode. There is a huge amount cut out of the initialisation, you no longer need to create front and back surfaces or track your windows position, alt-tabbing is taken care of, and D3DX is massively improved.

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Please state the nature of the debugging emergency.

sharewaregames.20m.com

Well there is a debug d3dx library shipped with the SDK. You can use implib with that (its called d3dx8d.dll) and it works fine with Borland.

Tony Cox, a Microsoft employee said on the lionhead discussion board that a d3dx8.dll (IE non-debug) wouldn''t be available because it could cause versioning issues

Oh well.

I haven''t found the page yet...