Chapter 17. Using DirectDraw for 2D Rendering

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Creating a Full Screen DirectDraw Device

• Animating Your Sprites

• In Brief

One of the downsides of using Direct3D to render simple 2D applications is the hardware requirements. Direct3D is by its nature more complex than DirectDraw, and the minimum hardware requirements just for creating a Direct3D device can be too high for some systems. For example, laptops that are only a little over a year old at times don't have the capabilities of creating a Direct3D device, yet they can easily create a DirectDraw Device.

Even with the pervasive support Direct3D has in the graphics cards today, DirectDraw has even more. If you need to render 2D graphics with the minimum hardware requirements, DirectDraw will meet your needs quite nicely. In this chapter, we will cover the same types of rendering we did in the previous chapter, just using DirectDraw instead. These actions will include

• Creating a full screen device.

• Rendering sprites.

• Animating sprites.