Hi there, well my 2D engine is complete with all its intended features, is quite heavily optimized (since I''m an old demo coder) I know how to tweak 2d stuff. Some people have told me that i could use 3d hardware in my engine to perform standard acceleared effects like alpha blending etc. The problem is that I know nothing about Direct3D or any 3D API. Could anyone give me a hint on this? If i should use Direct3D, should I then treat all my image buffers as textures ? I know I''m not being all that clear, but I''have no idea were to start - and getting cramps out of not having something to code.. // Babar Zafar // Copyright (c) 1982-2000, Parents Inc

Hi!

If you don''t know any graphics APIs yet, can I suggest you learn OpenGL? :-)
You can draw sprites, tiles and stuff like that using texturemapped polygons. You DON''T want to draw screen-sized backgrounds directly to the framebuffer. I wrote a brief, introductory article on 2D/3D a while back: http://www.gamedeveloper.org/delphi3d/articles/sprites.shtml

Tom Nuydens (delphi3d@gamedeveloper.org)

To be honest I cant help you much except to say that this would be a good idea for an article. I am also slightly intimidated by Immediate Mode D3D etc, and only want to use it for 2D, so all this 3D math and Z buffering gubbins is no use to me, i just need a good texturing tutorial with the latest version of DirectX. There isnt any book on the market telling you how to do 2D games with 3D acceleration.
if i work out how to do it, ill write an article myself :-)

http://www.positech.co.uk