Forum Discussion
Understanding the SDK
This is a rather broad question. I have a long way to go to catch up and understand the SDK properly. Maybe I shouldn't bother and just work with UDK or Unity and leave the real stuff alone, but I wou...
I can definitely say that you need to learn some of the fundamentals of 3d graphics regardless.
I've been learning about DirectX since about 1998, and while I'm fairly competent with 2d graphics work, I have a lot to catch up on to really get any 3d work done.
(Though I do know a lot of the principles, theoretical knowledge is still quite far removed from practical stuff.)
But yes. DirectX does require knowing a lot about the windows SDK on top of directX. And the windows SDK can be a bit of a headache at times. (Still, on the plus side, you learn about general windows application development too, which can be useful at times.)
My favourite book series is Andre LaMothe's 2 part series 'Tricks of the windows game programming gurus'. - They're old, but pretty interesting.
(The second volume has a slightly different name).
The first volume is from 1997, and the second is 2001, I think.
Obviously, that might seem really out of date, and indeed if you want to know specific API related things you could have issues with it. (the original book using mostly DirectX 6.21)
But, what I like about them is despite seemingly being about the windows SDK and DirectX, what they actually cover is the raw algorithms themselves.
The first volume is 2d graphics, and includes such things as sprite blitting, drawing lines, sounds, collision detection, etc.
But it tells you how to do it yourself. NOT how to make an API call to do it for you.
The second volume takes the work of the first, then builds a 3d engine on top of it.
There's almost no new DirectX or windows related material in it, because it tells you how to build a SOFTWARE renderer.
So, things like how you'd create polygons, do texture mapping, lighting, etc if you had no hardware 3d support at all.
Now, nobody would do that for anything serious these days, but you can learn a huge amount about what's going on by seeing how to implement this stuff for yourself.
It certainly makes it easier to understand what openGL, DirectX and 3d hardware are doing when you know the principles of how to do it in software...
I've been learning about DirectX since about 1998, and while I'm fairly competent with 2d graphics work, I have a lot to catch up on to really get any 3d work done.
(Though I do know a lot of the principles, theoretical knowledge is still quite far removed from practical stuff.)
But yes. DirectX does require knowing a lot about the windows SDK on top of directX. And the windows SDK can be a bit of a headache at times. (Still, on the plus side, you learn about general windows application development too, which can be useful at times.)
My favourite book series is Andre LaMothe's 2 part series 'Tricks of the windows game programming gurus'. - They're old, but pretty interesting.
(The second volume has a slightly different name).
The first volume is from 1997, and the second is 2001, I think.
Obviously, that might seem really out of date, and indeed if you want to know specific API related things you could have issues with it. (the original book using mostly DirectX 6.21)
But, what I like about them is despite seemingly being about the windows SDK and DirectX, what they actually cover is the raw algorithms themselves.
The first volume is 2d graphics, and includes such things as sprite blitting, drawing lines, sounds, collision detection, etc.
But it tells you how to do it yourself. NOT how to make an API call to do it for you.
The second volume takes the work of the first, then builds a 3d engine on top of it.
There's almost no new DirectX or windows related material in it, because it tells you how to build a SOFTWARE renderer.
So, things like how you'd create polygons, do texture mapping, lighting, etc if you had no hardware 3d support at all.
Now, nobody would do that for anything serious these days, but you can learn a huge amount about what's going on by seeing how to implement this stuff for yourself.
It certainly makes it easier to understand what openGL, DirectX and 3d hardware are doing when you know the principles of how to do it in software...