Well I am working on a 3d engine, however, going though all the math to have to write my own 3d rendering engine, and mesh builders, etc, is too much... especially since I am just starting at this. I have looked at an example using Direct3D retained mode, Dougs Dungeon (from the book "Win32 Game Prgramming Guide with DirectX"). It was originaly written for DirectX 3, and I am running DirectX 7.0 (Debug), anyway, when I ran the game, it was slow, I was getting about one frame every 2 to 4 seconds and there was nat many polygons on tha screen... only a few walls, roof and floor, all of which was written directly into the program code. Is DirectX retained mode always this slow? And is it a good/usefull idea to use Retained mode, or should I go Immediate mode (and what do I need to learn to do that if I should?). Thanks, Kurifu Roushu -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 My PGP Signature, Locate Public key on domain server. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGPfreeware 6.5.1 for non-commercial use iQA/AwUBOcbGNN42vCuvqlVSEQI2mQCglnHz5n1VcNacPQKRtSw8SAFGGWMAn1ei GyvSAwu1npdATbq3BwdhXIA1 =Vm6v -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

I don''t think it should be that slow, try using the Release .DLLs rather than the debug ones. RM can be slow, but if it is only a few polys as you say, it shouldn''t be that slow. You might want to switch to IM though, as Microsoft is concentrating on it now. IM with D3DX is not that much more difficult than RM.

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#pragma twice

sharewaregames.20m.com

RM may be slow but it ain''t mean''t to be that slow. Are you sure it isn''t your computer. I know Quake may appear to be fast on your PC but that has more specific rendering. RM sits over the top of D3DIM and is more generic in the way it works.

-David

Then how come in the DX SDK 7.0a in the documentation it has references to Retained mode?


Maketty
(Matthew FitzGerald)
Knightvision Games

Direct3D Retained Mode Documentation
Direct3D Retained Mode version 6.0, and documentation for the API, is included with this SDK. No future development for Direct3D Retained Mode is anticipated.

Although Direct3D Retained Mode is not part of DirectX Foundation, your C, C++, and Visual Basic applications can access its features and services. Documentation for the Direct3D Retained Mode API is included in this SDK. For more information, see Direct3D Retained Mode.

Note: The documentation for Direct3D Retained Mode includes complete overview and reference material presented for C and C++ developers, and includes new reference material for Visual Basic developers.
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Pulled straight from the sdk

read this part in particular:
Direct3D Retained Mode version 6.0, and documentation for the API, is included with this SDK. No future development for Direct3D Retained Mode is anticipated.

I have done some looking at the DirectX SDK samples on DirectX7 IM, and well I have found that it is pretty difficult compaired to DirectX7 RM.

I wish there was a good book written on IM mode, however there is next to no good books I can find on the subject, well to be honest, I cannot find anything.

I did some looking about online, and the only information I can seem to find online about IM mode does not explain much of the differences between IM and RM which do not help, most of the differences are not documented and do not make much sense hence.

What are the benifits of IM over RM? And where can I get some good documentation that will actually teach me how to use IM?

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