I was hoping if someone here could point me in the right direction to programming in windows. I''ve taken a C++ course in school and have a pretty good foundation in DOS(Console) programming. I made a tetris clone using something called winbgi which basically let my console program display graphics in windows. So bsically when you run it you see the console and then a window pops up with the actual game. What I want to do is make this game into an actual windows program. SOmething with a windows feel to it (buttons, menus, etc). I have all the logic setup, I just dont know where to go from there. Ive heard of MFC and win32, but dont really know what these things are.

Well, you have lots of options here. You can use the built-in GDI to draw your stuff, which is ''easiest'' but slowest (graphically speaking). You can use directX in a window, either drawing just the ''game'' section with DirectX and using windows UI to draw buttons/menus/etc, or draw everything in DirectX, also making it easy to swap between windowed and fullscreen mode.

Either way, you should learn window stuff first, and for that, you should start with MFC, cuz it''s easier, although somewhat confusing for game development, like why use a view/document setup for games?

So what you want to do at this point is find a good beginner level win32 or MFC book, concentrate on that for a while, then get a beginner DirectX book and work on that for a bit. At this point, you should have a unsteady grasp of windows (and messaging) as well as DirectInput, DirectSound, Direct3D (or draw, if you use DX 7.0).

Actually, scratch that MFC, if you''re coming from a DOS background, you want to keep some of that main game loop logic, so using Win32 would be better suited.

G''luck,
-Alamar

You''d probably want to use MFC. There are tons of books available, and something like Tetris, MFC would make development time minimal (Also, tetris isn''t that hard to make or that memory intensive).

Besides buying books, the best places to check are

MSDN Library
winprog.org

Be Carefull with MFC. It is very inefficient. Win32 is harder to lean, but it is faster, smaller, and ALOT more efficient. I''m not trying to start a war or anything, but I work with 15 professional programmers and not a single one of them will use MFC.

You could take a look at the Hand''s On Interactive Game Development forum. You''ll find it on the forums page of this
site.

It looks like they just finished up a tetris clone but maybe you could catch up.

Hey Anonymous Poster!!!

Geesh- I just wanted to say thank you, thank you for the tip on the tutorial here- Ive been working on it for about a week now and man have I learned alot- just amazing.... So thanks!!!