Hey! Awesome forum! What I want to do is write some text on the screen... easy enough you say. Here's the catch. I want it to always be displayed on the screen... regardless of what application is running or in focus... could be MS Word, Minesweeper, quake... whatever. How do you draw stuff that wont be contained in a window? Help! Thanks!

Interesting question. I'm not sure how it can be done, or even if it can be done. I know you can overlay graphics to some extent, because a very nifty program I use, Samurize does it. You may want to look around on the forums or email the devs about it.

As for overlaying on top of graphical applications, it can get quite difficult. First, you have to hook into the Direct3DCreate9() function and creation a custom IDirect3D9 interface, with the accompanying IDirect3DDevice9 interface. In that interface, you can have your code (say in EndScene()) to draw your text or whatever. I did it once for a commercial project, and it was rough [sick]

Yep, DirectDraw overlays would work for this - googling for the term might get you a tutorial or 2. If not, PM me or something and I'll dig through my code archives - I've written something similar before, and maybe I still have it.

Basically, an overlay is a surface that is always drawn on top of everything else (by the graphics card).