I'm a fan of physical reference materials, I know, it's slightly old fashioned, but I was curious if anyone had any suggestions for a good DirectX book that coveres all the basic components (D3d, DSound, DInput, DDraw, etc.). I've played a bit with OpenGL and although I like it, it lacks the input methods that are so easy with DirectX (or so I'm led to believe), and I'm not exactly writing for cross platform compatibility at the moment. Maybe someday, but I figure I'll write my own OS before then ^_^

So, any suggestions other than: "3d game programming with C++" (which is just a DX reference manual with a huge bloated wrapper) would be appreciated. Thankee.

I have a translation of Sams teach yourself DirectX 7 in 24h. It's a good introduction to DirectX. There's probably a newer one covering DirectX 8.

RedX

Tricks of the windows game programmin gurus is good for direct x 7, there is a new second edition of the book out now also that updates the material inside to cover DX8. It is more of a tutorial than a reference, but its still a good book.

The reason OpenGL lacks the input methods is because OpenGL is a pure graphics library. It doesn't deal with input at all! If you want input in OpenGL you have to use another library, e.g. SDL.

Even better, use GLUT, a complete cross-platform framework for developing OpenGL applications.

LOL! Isn't it amusing that a person can't ask a question about DirectX and get a reply without getting atleast one (usually a lot more than one) comment about how OpenGL is the best?

I mean, honestly.. Zandalf even makes it clear that he's not doing cross-platform development, and still he's getting OpenGL comments, one of them using the argument that GLUT is cross-platform.. *chuckle*

Why not let people decide for themselves? :o)

He complained about the lack of input support in OpenGL and all I did was say why...I never said anything about not using DirectX. GLUT is another nice toolkit..but it ends up being a bit limiting (e.g. text support is only for bitmap fonts where in SDL you can load truetype fonts and render them to OpenGL surfaces).

I have to hand one thing to MS, Direct X is one hell of a good API for dealing with graphics, input, sound, networking packets and a bunch of other things

Angel - thanks ^_^. Sometimes people like their soapbox, and I don't mind that much. Heck, I even learned something from it this time.

Unknown - Can I get a definition of SDL? I've never heard of it, and it definently sounds worth looking into. Having spent quite a bit of time at NeHe's OGL site last summer, I know a bit of OGL now, and it's pretty obvious that he would prefer to stay as far away from windows programming as well, but if there's an input library seperate from DX, I hadn't heard about it yet.

Meta, red - Thanks, I'll look into those (although I'm not a huge fan of SAMs, something about a large clock looking thing ^_^;;)

SDL is the Simple Directmedia Layer, available from libsdl.org. It runs on GNU/Linux, *BSD, most other POSIX systems, Windows, and Mac OS X. It handles input and 2d/3d output (you can do GL stuff to sdl surfaces). There is also audio support using a few optional (?) SDL extensions (nothing fancy like 3d audio, but there is openal [http://www.openal] for that..except OpenAL appears to have died alongside Loki).

<OT>
nah... the openal newsgroup is still active and i think creative is now hosting the cvs. Jedi Knight II also used openal (optionally) for the sound stuff.

btw: the address should be www.openal.org :)
</OT>

It doesn't matter anyway; www.openal.org just points to the old Loki Games site. I think OpenAL is hosted at icculus.org now.

cant find it over at icculus.org; just found a link to opensource.creative.com (inside the freespace2 project :). There are some instructions on how to get it - whatever...