Is DirectDraw being phased out?

[hog]

I have two books, .NET Game Programming with DirectX 9.0 and an Xmas present from the wife, Learn VB.NET Through Game Programming.

 

The latter was bough as it had .NET and Game Programming in the title:)

 

Thing is both these books are 2003, both are smae publisher, but the first states that DirectDraw is available in DX9 for backward compatibility only and should not be used for new projects.

 

The secon does not mention this but does detail how to write DirectDraw apps?

 

So should I avoid DirectDraw or not?

[mutant]

There was nothing new to DirectDraw since version 7 so I would guess that Microsoft doesn't care much for it anymore. I wouldn't say not use it since its available. I don't know what backward compatibility would managed DirectDraw have since there was no eariler version for DirectDraw under .NET than with DirectX9 :).

[wyrd]

As far as I know, DirectDraw isn't supposed by Microsoft anymore. It's really just there to keep your options open, but if you have the math skills then you need to be using Direct3D.

[hog]

yeah this is what the .NET book said but I was confused that two book published to deal with DX9 by the same publisher gives two conflicting views?

 

Thnx to you both:)

[wyrd]

The publisher has nothing to do with the views of the author. Now if it was by the same author, then I'd question whether he knew what he was talking about.

[Loki]

I doubt very much that DD will be phased out any time soon. All current and future hardware will support 2D operations, simply because they pretty much have to, and have done, thus, if even only for backwards compatibility 2D operations will remain at hardware level.

 

I also doubt very much that MS will update DD any time soon, I think they have dropped support for it full stop. However, again, for backwards compatibility,... FOREVER shall it remain.......

FOREVER!! I hope.

(Or someone at MS wants a slap up the head)

Edited December 28, 2003 by Loki

[hog]

Mmm so I may well have a sniff round this DD thing:)

[wyrd]

I can actually see DD going away in about 5 years, but not before then. After all, it's only used for games, and how many games being made now use it? None. It's a world of D3D. So when all the old games phase out, and are not supported on the new operating systems (most DD games were back in the day of Win98 and before, which is no longer supported by MS), DD will phase out. It's just a matter of time at this point.

[AndreRyan]

Just to add to this. Microsoft is even removing raw 2D from it's operating systems. The next version of Windows(Windows Longhorn) will have an entirely Managed version of GDI(called Avalon) written using Direct3D from the ground up. DirectDraw will probably remain for some time but will eventually be taken out since, although more difficult to set up, Direct3D's 2D capabilities combined with 3D features produce better results then DirectDraw ever did on it's own. But on the upside Windows itself will now have the speed to write 2D games using the built in drawing APIs.

[slantz]

I sincerely doubt that DirectDraw will ever stop being suported under Windows.

 

I think that we'll see it always supported in a kind of 'emulation mode', even if/when the primary OS is built from the ground up on D3D. Microsoft has an internal design philosophy these days of retaining backwards compatibility. Given that DD is a relatively thin but valuable technology, maintaining support for DD (at least in terms of keeping it running under Windows) should be relatively easy.

 

I think that if DD best suits your needs, then you should feel comfortable developing with it. I expect it will be supported indefinitely just like DX1 is still supported today and just how DD (not otherwise touched since DX7) was updated to run under managed mode in DX9.

 

-Hiro_Antagonist

[AndreRyan]

That's not 100% correct, DirectPlay3 is not supported anymore, Microsoft made a large alteration to DirectPlay which broke DirectPlay3 compatibility, but they didn't fix it, it is true that Microsoft may leave DirectDraw in as emulated but they may not wish to, Microsoft is actually half-phasing out Win32. They intend to get everyone to write programs in .Net or Win64, they said that in Longhorn, they will not support Avalon in Win32 DLLs, so there aren't going to be API calls, only Managed programs can use it, and all the Win32 DLLs are not going to be improved or added to any further, plus 90% of Windows itself will be written in .Net, the relevance is: no Win32, no old programs using DirectDraw, no need for DirectDraw.

 

However, they say they will operate Win32 in an emulated environment(Like DOS/Win16 programs "think" they are in DOS/Windows 3.11 but their actually instructing Windows to do things). So an emulated DirectDraw mode will possibly remain as part a compatibility COM interface.

[samsmithnz]

Why would MS assume that everything in the future is gonig to be 3d? Sometimes you just need a 2d pic.

 

I know that you can still do everything in Direct3D, but its harder.

[AndreRyan]

Like I said in the first post, Avalon(Microsoft's replacement for GDI) will be written in Direct3D, it's still 2D only as far as I know, it just utilises everything GDI+ does, except this time with Hardware Acceleration so you should be able to use the functions and classes in System.Drawing.dll at more than 60FPS

[wyrd]

If you just need a 2D pic, it's usually not game related. In that case, there's the windows API, which is totally unrelated to DD. If speed is important, then D3D is the only way to go.

[spatuel]

Check top 10 selling games

 

Two things:

 

first: 6 of 10 top selling games last year were 2D (does anybody see The Sims?)

 

Second:

If you don't have an accelerator card and want to draw a sprite using two vectors and one texture will fill the pain, try to draw 15.000 vectors and you will see your frame rate on the floor.

 

Conclusion:

I believe is necessary to have DDraw and D3D, otherwise check DirectX 9 were DDraw is back again and is not the same as DDraw 7.

[wyrd]

1) Just because the game was two dimensional does not mean it used DD. D3D is fully capable of rendering sprites.

 

2) A geforce 2 only costs like $20 (that's half the price of your average game). It's insanely rare for any type of gamer (even casual ones) to have anything less.