Hello! So first of all let me just say I am the level design guy and programing is not my best friend. however I have tried to become friends with c++ by grasping the basic knowledge of c++ with pointers arrays classes etc.. Today I started with direct X programming :( not wanting to but at the same time I like to know whats going on in other aspects of game development. After a long 2 hour or so I finally got a simple 800X600 window open with background color to be black ;) lol I was blown away with the complexity of directX. I think programming and DirectX are two totally different things and if you are good programmer it doesnt mean you will be good at directX (my initial reaction)!! As you can tell Im not a genius programmer lol (its clearly obvious) What really bothers me is (1) that (There are no good newbie tutorials out there) please give me a link if you know any :) (2) to go to the next tutorial of inserting a simple triangle with 3 vertices it takes so many lines of code!! And I have no idea what they mean. LIKE NO IDEA lol maybe im just not patient. oh and just thinking that there is a long way to get to actually making inputs for characters and animations it really hurts :( I sat there and read it over and over...I have bought books for it too but it just is too complex. Is it just a phase that you will go through and get better? Any thoughts? Should I just stick with level design? lol How are you all doing with DirectX? Please help this brother out with any website links that are newbie or a better way to approach directX. Message to all DirectX programmer : YOU ARE ALL GENIUSES!!!

I started learning Direct3D with the book "Direct3D Programming Kick Start" by Clayton Walnum. It goes through all the basics, starting at the very beginning.

Thank you everyone for your replies...I was just really pissed to begin with lol next gen direct x and games shouldnt always be about graphics but making it alittle bit easier to use at least to learn the basics for beginners. Yet the basics are hard too :( Again my opinion lol ;)

I will look at the tutorials for sure cuz I really want to learn directX. Programmers make it happen ;) thats all i can say lol


I got book from clayton Walnum (21 day teach yourself to directx...)his tutorials are amazing although he is talking about direct X 8.1 but even the first tutorial when i create one myself it doesnt work :(


Again I will have to work at it ;) it wont come easy by the looks of things lol

Big thank you everyone :)

Quote:Original post by majourab
Thank you everyone for your replies...I was just really pissed to begin with lol next gen direct x and games shouldnt always be about graphics but making it alittle bit easier to use at least to learn the basics for beginners. Yet the basics are hard too :( Again my opinion lol ;)

The basics of DirectX isnt hard, it's just rather extensive.
If you keep using it, it'll come pretty easy :)

This is a great tutorial on directx for beginners.

http://www.drunkenhyena.com/cgi-bin/dx9.pl

That set of tutorials is GREAT for setting things up the right way to catch all the directx errors that could possibly happen etc.

he also has some game programming tutorials on his site. I'd stay away from those, they are not good at all, but the directx tutorials are really good.

I'll go by my experiences with learning OpenGL (which is probably a somewhat simpler API to work with, especially now that 60% of it was deprecated) to give you some advice.

Quote:Original post by majourab
(2) to go to the next tutorial of inserting a simple triangle with 3 vertices it takes so many lines of code!! And I have no idea what they mean. LIKE NO IDEA lol maybe im just not patient. oh and just thinking that there is a long way to get to actually making inputs for characters and animations it really hurts :(

A certain amount of glue code is required to get going, but once it's in place you can modify little bits to see how things work. The good news is that for now, you can just copy/paste some parts and/or just write them once. You don't need to know about how Windows does messaging in order to copy that code. Eventually you will want to rewrite that stuff to make it more robust, but for learning it won't matter. But for functions related to the API itself, you better look up and read up on each and every one that you copy so that you know exactly what's going on, or else it's not very useful to you. This takes time. This is where you will feel the difference between the low quality tutorials on the net that just show a bit of code (that they took from somewhere else, mostly) and and a good book that expains things properly.

Quote:Original post by majourab
I sat there and read it over and over...I have bought books for it too but it just is too complex.
Is it just a phase that you will go through and get better?

You will get better, provided you spend time doing it. If you want a much easier route language-wise but want to stick with DirectX, why not check out C# and the XNA Game Studio?