i''am a newbie to game programming , i was reading AndreLe Mothe book game programing for dummies and he has used his own function to load bitmaps which he calls Load_Bitmap_File() but on the MSDN site i saw a function LoadImage() which can be used to load bitmaps and another function called LoadBitmap().. Why did Andre use a different function (his function basically checks whether it is 8, 16 or a 24 bit bitmpa and if 24 he converts it to 16 and the he loads the bitmap step by step). and the second question is how are the other functions different that Andre''s function??

what about the function LoadBitmap() , this is a directx function
i believe of class DDDirectDrawSurface.? He could have used it . this function though uses LoadImage(). I think your your reason that it can be used in windows and linux could be right.. but there is a function available in Directx...