I am almost finished with the book, "Teach Yourself C++ in 21 Days" and I am not sure where to go from there. Main thing I would like to do is start coding small games in DirectX or something. The book really doesnt go into anything about drawing images on screen and all, so I am kinda stuck there. IF you could recomend a book or article it would be appreciated. Should I get a DirectX specific book, or get something like Windows programming or what? Thanks for any help you can give. Gunslinger6

I personally like "Programming Role-Playing Games with DirectX" by Jim Adams. It was very good helping me learn a lot about DirectX as a whole. It makes direct3d really clear. Also, check out NeHe''s OpenGl tutorials. Personally I found OpenGl more user friendly at first. As for Windows, all the DirectX and OpenGl starter tutorials I''ve seen cover basic Windows programming.

Or you can go to http://www.winprog.org/ and start learning programming windows with API. I really suggest you to learn win 32 API programming 1st since it''s the basic and you wont need anything than C++ knowleage.
DirectX and OpenGL however required you to know how to programming windows 1st. You can still programming 2D games with windows API w/o knowing DirectX, but you wont be able to understand DirectX if you dont know API

good luck

i''m gonna stick my neck out here (at the risk of a little flaming) and recommend Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus by Lamothe.

ok, there are issues with some of the code being buggy (some of which were addressed AFAIK in the second edition).
also it does cover an old version of directX.
it doesn''t cover 3d (although there are further articles on the cd which do)

however, there is loads of usefull info in there.
it got me up and running with directX in about a week.
it is IMHO a good introduction to the mindset required for directX coding.

and best of all it comes with MS Visual C++ free on the cd!
not that i''m saying this is "the best" development environment, but it is a very usable one, and free is always good...

Windows Game Programming for Dummies is simple, short, and a good introduction.

I agree with Mr Whippy, "Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus" is a really good book to start learning, not just directX, but about how a game should be designed and how a basic game engine works. The only thing I would say bad about it now is that it uses directX 7, and directX 8 is considerably diffent graphically(no ddraw), the rest of the book is good though.