GDI+ is clearly not fast enough for me. I really don't understand why .NET has such library capable of doing so much with such low performance. Having said that, I now seek a new graphics library for my project which is a tiled 2D game, being developed in C#.

SDL .NET
I've browsed the web and I've found some interesting things like the SDL lib. There is SDL C# wrapper for .NET which seems rather nice. After I tried it I realize it would not compile on x64 architectures. So I went to their forum just to look at its scary inactivity. There is one post over there that actually describes my problem, unfortunately it has not been answered, not even after almost an year. SDL C# last update was in 21 November 2010, so I can sadly assume it is pretty dead. Moving on.

OpenGL
I want to do simple things like drawing images and text, something that is quite hard to achieve with OpenGL's .NET wrappers I've come across. I really don't need that much performance just something simple to use, for the very own simple things I mentioned above. SDL C# was very easy to work with, too bad it is gone...

DirectX
I still didn't get it. Managed Direct X was discontinued, does this means June's DirectX SDK does not support it? Does not support it but still includes their libraries? I'm using some libraries that came with it. Are those managed? They are inside a folder named: DirectX for Managed Code. The most recent library seems to have the version 1.0.2911.0 last updated on 31-03-2006. Can someone please clarify if these are the libs that were discontinued? I really don't want to use stuff at the edge of dying.

Anyway, I just need a simple solution for drawing 2D graphics inside multiple .NET controls, namely panels and forms. I really don't care if it does not support advanced 3D features or 3D at all, all I need is a solid 2D gfx lib with good support and easy to work with. I wouldn't mind at all using DirectX since I'm a bit familiar with it. But a solution like SDL would be the key. XNA seems to be quite different from those-libs-I'm-not-sure-if-they-are-managed. So I'm avoiding it.

Thank you very much for any possible help in this issue. I'm a developer eager to develop in my not-so-available-spare-time and I have this project I want to share with the rest of the world, but the beginning seems to be challenging already.

Managed DirectX (MDX) was discontinued quite some time ago. The replacement for it is XNA.

If you're more into the low-level side of things, SlimDX is a low-level managed wrapper for DirectX, which I've been using for the last 15 months and can highly recommend. SlimDX can be integrated with WPF controls apparently, but I haven't done it myself, so I'm not sure how effective that might be for you.

Thank you all for the replies!

Postie:
I tried already SlimDX but the lack of examples pushed me away. The small differences they state for the "easy" translation between DirectX and SlimDX tutorials are enough to don't let me achieve nothing. Although SlimDX seems to have a solid development rate, I prefer to loose time with something even more certain like a gfx lib from a bigger corp (aka Miscrosoft). Nonetheless I'm the one to blame for my poor DirectX skills.

Dynamo_Maestro / DvDmanDT:
I actually did tried XNA yesterday, but after a huge battle on how to render it on a panel I gave up. I need to build an engine capable of rendering to a panel inside the editor and into a form for the game's output. These conditions are non-negotiable. I know its possible to do this but the examples I tried were too confusing for me.

laztrezort :
Yesterday, late in night, and after testing SlimDX and XNA, I managed to increase the render speed of GDI+ drastically. It turns out that if I pre-render the full map into a huge BMP and then if I just render a cropped area into the screen the efficiency is absurdly increased! I even tried rendering a 4800x4800 map into a estimated 2500x1100 screen size (the editor's form stretched between my 2 screens) with an average speed of 50fps! This is definitely more than enough! Since my tiles have fixed sizes 48x48 they don’t overlap, making constant map updates scarce. I just need then to draw the units and other interactive objects over the cropped map.


Just out of curiosity, what would you say about Silverlight and WFP for simple 2D games?


And just to finish, if I actually needed a step-by-step example on how to deploy a XNA device into a panel would someone care to do one? Because, I might had found a solution for now regarding GDI+, but I now in future it won’t be enough, I guess…

I really miss Managed DirectX
If only I knew Managed DX libs would continue to function for some years I would still use them.

DvDmanDT they are familiar but lack tutorials. Anyway, I've discovered Gorgon lib, it seems it does exactly what I need. Fast 2D in a simple and easy way. I'm going to try it today, once I get home.