I want to make a chat room for my game.. However, I don''t want to make it a Windows GUI.. I want something with DirectDraw. Question is.. Do I have to draw each player name that enters the chat room and the messages they type? Or is there an easier way to do it? Any suggestions would be appreciated

Well, I wasn''t asked exactly about how to do a chat room..


I was asking how Id show it on screen .

Would I have to draw every message and every player that entered? Or would there be an easier way to do the chat (IE text boxes that show up nicely on top of a directdraw surface)

bump

I''m fairly sure you''d have to get the dc of the surface every frame in order to use any window gdi commands, and most people here would tell you using gdi is far to slow. Honestly its not to hard to make you own chat window using directdraw.. Just take it steps.. First you need a way of drawin texting and checking length of a stringin pixels. Then you need a function which breaks up a single (or several) chat buffer strings into the correct sizes based on pixell length. After that its just a matter of drawing the correct text in the right place.. Really it would take no more than a day to make a fairly decent system.

You dont get all the amenities of a windows textbox, but you do get a functional and fast chat window.