Well, I can say I'm a beginner programmer, I know ANSI C and a few other basic languages. I'm working on a simple DOS based text maze game. I have about 600 lines of C code in it so far. Currently I'm working on the maze basics and am basing it off of some premade code which I am altering and adding to. The problem is I don't have a good grasp of HANDLEs, I know what they are but I'd like to know how they work so I can make my own. All so I was wondering if anyone has a good article on the main functions of the windows.h header in C.

Thanks

Handles are just numbers that Windows uses to keep track of things. Each window has a number. Each bitmap has a number. Some functions in windows.h (like CreateWindow) will return the number/id/handle of the window that was created. Then you pass that number/id/handle as an argument to other functions (like ShowWindow) that operate on the thing that the number corresponds to.

You shouldn't need that for a DOS-based game, though.

- taubz

I'm using a handle for WriteConsoleOutput().

Handles are still just numbers which refer to something else. I looked up that function on msdn.microsoft.com/library, and in the case of that function it's a number which just refers to a "screen buffer."

If you do poking around on that website, you'll find the functions for creating new screen buffers and activating them.

- taubz

www.gametutorials.com have a great tutorial on making a DOS console text-based maze game

Thanks, both the MSDN and gametutorial sites helped.