I''m fairly new to Windows programming, and what I''m trying to do is to load a bitmap resource from my program and place it in an offscreen buffer. The resource is included properly, and all required surfaces are created without any errors. I get a handle to the bitmap something like this: HBITMAP bitmap = LoadBitmap(main_instance, MAKEINTRESOURCE(MAIN_TILESET)); But what do I do from there? I''ve been reading Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus, which includes sample code for reading a bitmap from an external file and dumping it onto the primary surface. It''s not so much the fact that it works with external files and not resources that gets me confused, it''s more that the sample code doesn''t run right on my computer. ^_^ It errors out somewhere and just gives me a black screen, so that''s not helping too much. What I tried doing is casting the HBITMAP handle to an HFILE and then using some file I/O routines to read in the headers and the image data, but that didn''t work at all. Can anyone point me to some explanations on how to work with bitmap resources? I haven''t been able to find anything. Thanks a lot- -Joe [Ironblayde] Aeon Software

That doesn''t sound too bad at all. ^_^ I should be able to get it working that way; thanks a lot!

-Joe [Ironblayde]
Aeon Software

Hmm. I''ve been doing this for most of the day now, and it''s still not working. Basically all the function does now is what you suggested. It sets up DCs for the image and the surface, makes a call to LoadBitmap to get the HBITMAP, then selects it into the image DC using SelectObject. Then I made a call to BitBlt, followed by releasing the DC and all that cleanup stuff.

But the bitmap isn''t getting plotted on the surface. Instead, the surface is getting blanked. When I run the program without calling the above function, I have it set for now to flip the back buffer onto my primary surface, just to see what''s back there. Invariably, it starts with some garbage on the surface that shows up immediately. But when I call the above function, it just ends up black. None of the functions returns an error code, so it''s doing *something*. I just don''t know what.

I''ve checked to make sure that the surfaces are set up right. No function in the program is returning an error code, and basic stuff like pixel plotting on the back buffer, or on offscreen buffers, works fine. But I can''t figure out the bitmap resources! What am I doing wrong? The only ideas I could come up with are:

1) SelectObject says in the help that it requires a bitmap created with CreateBitmap; it doesn''t say anything about using LoadBitmap. Does it expect a pointer right to the color data, without all the headers? What exactly is a ''handle'' to a bitmap anyway? It can''t be the same as a pointer, but it sure would be nice if I could find a pointer to the data and just read the info out!

2) It''s a 24-bit image and I''m using a 16-bit resolution. I assume this would be a problem. This function doesn''t need to be called often and doesn''t need to have blinding speed, so I was just going to go through a pixel at a time doing a color transform down to 16-bit, then plotting it out.

If anyone can help me out a little further on getting bitmap resources onto a surface, I would be very grateful! Thanks-

-Joe [Ironblayde]
Aeon Software