... can someone tell me offhand what kind of traditional "3D" effects like coloured lighting and alpha blending, I can use in DirectDraw? If stuff like that requires that I use Direct3D instead of DirectDraw, I will happily drop the DDraw angle right now and write everything entirely in D3D. Bear in mind that I want to make a 2D game - I just want to throw in some FX to improve the look.
As an aside, how relevant is DDraw these days anyway? Everyone is writing 3D games, but I'm still a huge fan of pure 2D stuff like Diablo, Fallout and Starcraft, and I think that style of game design still has lots to offer. On of the major factors is converting concept art to actual game art. In 2D, you pretty much scan the source art to bitmap and drop it in your game. If the resolution and colour depth is up to it, the game retains much of the original art "feel". With 3D game, unless your modelling and texturing is top notch, a lot gets lost between concept and realization. A good example is WarcraftII vs WarcraftIII. It takes tonnes of development and processing power to get the latter to try to match the atmospheric appearance of the former, even though the former is almost a decade old and runs happily on a 486.
Just my 2 cents - would be nice to know what other ppl here think.
As an aside, how relevant is DDraw these days anyway? Everyone is writing 3D games, but I'm still a huge fan of pure 2D stuff like Diablo, Fallout and Starcraft, and I think that style of game design still has lots to offer. On of the major factors is converting concept art to actual game art. In 2D, you pretty much scan the source art to bitmap and drop it in your game. If the resolution and colour depth is up to it, the game retains much of the original art "feel". With 3D game, unless your modelling and texturing is top notch, a lot gets lost between concept and realization. A good example is WarcraftII vs WarcraftIII. It takes tonnes of development and processing power to get the latter to try to match the atmospheric appearance of the former, even though the former is almost a decade old and runs happily on a 486.
Just my 2 cents - would be nice to know what other ppl here think.