I'm a 3rd year CS major preparing to write a GUI for this game for a class I'm taking. The GUI will basically show a 2D top down representation car driving on some dynamically generated roads(a VertexBuffer I think, about 1km area of roads) plus zooming capabilities(so maybe a little 3D) and some buttons. I call that the RTS view. There will also be a 2D, top down view much closer to the car which I like to call the RPG view that shows not only the roads and the car but also obstacles. My ideal for the RPG view would be to take a snippet of the RTS map(not sure if possible) then draw additional things on it. I'll also be using quite a few text display panels. I've had no real DirectX experience but I've made a bunch of games in Java and C++ in the past, using various simple 2D engines. So, in preparation for this, I was thinking I'd get some documentation and a good framework. I've been looking around Amazon and found the following book by Tom Miller. Is this a good book to whip up such a GUI in a few weeks? I've been playing around with this outdated framework by CUnit by turning back the system clock on my comp and using an older version of DirectX. Such a framework, which includes sprite drawing functions and text panels is pretty important since I only have a few weeks to do this. I've also found this open source framework for MDX and was curious if anyone could suggest an OSS framework. Any help you can provide is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

I don't know if this is what you mean/want, and if it isn't, sorry, also, I'm not very experienced in this area. I do have that KickStart book, and it doesn't focus on GUI or even talk about it. If I remember correctly, there's already some type of GUI framework in DirectX isn't there? Check the examples, is that what you mean? Sorry if it isn't :(.

EDIT: Googled for you, found this, might help?

Also this, this, and this. Let me know if it helps.

I originally hoped the framework would provide most of the UI components such as text display panels and buttons and it looks like it probably will(thanks blanky!).

I mainly wanted the book as a MDX reference because the online API(the Microsoft one) is not well commented for someone without DX experience. I was very frustrated reading through the components of the Device class and seeing that the only comment for DepthStencilSurface basically explained it as a depth stencil surface. Besides the beginner and kickstart Tom Miller books on MDX, I've also found this book by Frank Luna which has good reviews and is mentioned as a good reference. I still feel a bit lost about the book, but thanks for the advice so far.

So, between these would I be right in choosing the beginning 3D programming book by Frank Luna?

Bleh, I meant the beginner's book by Tom Miller.