I've just switched from Dark GDK to the Irrlicht engine because GDK wouldn't run as a child window to a Win32 API GUI whereas Irrlicht is fine. Only problem is I can find heaps of info on 3D with Irrlicht but nothing on 2D and the IrrLicht forums seem to be underused. At least nobody ever answers my questions at the Irrlicht site. I can do some fancy 3D stuff with Irrlicht but still can't load a simple sprite file (2D) and cycle through the sprites. I can't find any documentation on telling the engine how many sprites across and down on the file and how to set a cycle frame rate and how to tell it where to start. I can do it fine with GDK. Can anybody help or advise me how to do that in Irrlicht or of any other C++ game engine that will run nicely inside the Win32 API without trying to take over the "main" function and the message loop? m0ng00se

Have you checked out the tutorials at irrlicht.sf.net? I believe there's a 2D in Irrlicht one.

FlyingIsFun1217

Yes I have and done the tutorial.

It is the worst 2D tutorial I've ever seen. It uses two sprites on a much larger bitmap background and you manually tell the engine the exact location of each sprite then it flips between them and that's it.

There is nothing at all about normal old fashioned 2D animation using a sprite sheet where you tell the engine how many across and how many down then it automatically finds the first sprite and loops through the sheet.

When I asked on the forum there I just got flamed and called a "newbie" without anybody actually telling me anything useful. I got the impression they basically didn't know the answer because they were all building FPS 3D games which Irrlicht has great documentation and tutorials on.

m0ng00se

Thanks guys.

No there is no special reason I want 3D other than a vague idea to mix 2D and 3D or upgrade my code later to fully 3D. At the moment I'm more than happy with just 2D until I read a lot more books on how to build 3D apps properly.

I'm new to game programming so I'm just learning. I've written C++ code for business applications (not that I'm much good at it) off and on for years but never any graphics stuff. I went to download the latest VC++ compiler from MS a few months ago and they were pushing Dark GDK on the MS site. So out of curiousity I downloaded the graphics SDK and got hooked immediately on animation and game building.

I'm interested in any advice at all on the best engines and best approach to use.

m0ng00se