Roadmap for Desktop DirectX apps
Here are key resources to help you get started with using DirectX and C++ to develop graphics-intensive Desktop apps, such as games. This is not a comprehensive list of all of the features or available resources.
Get started
Here are some key topics. Setting up your DirectX project, acclimating yourself to Windows, and sample applications.
| Topic | Description |
|---|---|
| Create your first Windows app using DirectX | Use this basic tutorial to get started with DirectX app development, then use the roadmap to continue exploring DirectX. |
| Get started with DirectX for Windows | Review the steps you must take to begin developing a game using DirectX and C++. |
| Complete code for a DirectX framework | Get the code for a basic DirectX rendering framework. |
| How to Use Direct3D 11 | This section demonstrates how to use the Microsoft Direct3D 11 API to accomplish several common tasks. |
| Programming Guide for Direct3D 11 | The programming guide contains information about how to use the Microsoft Direct3D 11 programmable pipeline to create realtime 3D graphics for desktop applications. |
| Tools for DirectX Graphics | Documentation for tools used to support DirectX development. |
| What's new in Direct3D 11 | A breakdown of all the features added in the most recent versions of DirectX and Direct3D (currently 11.2). |
| Download Visual Studio 2013 | You must have Visual Studio Express 2013 for Windows Desktop to create Windows Store games. For a tour of Visual Studio, see Develop Windows Store apps using Visual Studio 2012. For info about new features in Visual Studio, see Product Highlights for Visual Studio 2013. |
| Where is the DirectX SDK? | Contains guidance for devs who want to bring their DirectX projects into Microsoft Visual Studio. |
Sample applications
| Topic | Description |
|---|---|
| Direct3D Tutorial Win32 sample | Basic desktop Direct3D tutorial sample. |
| DirectX video rendering sample | A sample that demonstrates custom video rendering with Direct3D. |
Review key Direct3D 11 concepts
| Topic | Description |
|---|---|
| Graphics Pipeline | Covers the basic Direct3D 11 graphics pipeline. |
| Rendering | Covers the Direct3D rendering models, components, shaders and API call flow. |
| Resources | Covers Direct3D "resources", such as buffers and other GPU resource types. |
| Effects | Covers Direct3D multi-shader instancing and effects. |
| How To: Create a Swap Chain | How to create the swap chain used to draw pixels to a region of the screen. |
| How To: Create a Device and Immediate Context | How to create a Direct3D device abstraction and an immediate context for drawing. |
| How to: Create a Vertex Buffer | How to create a simple list of mesh vertices for processing by the GPU. |
| How to: Create an Index Buffer | How to create an index buffer enabling the vertex shader to walk the order of vertices in a mesh. |
| How to: Create a Constant Buffer | How to pass constant (uniform) data between the CPU and the GPU during rendering. |
| How to: Create a Texture | How to create a texture or other buffer resource that can be sampled by the GPU. |
| How to: Initialize a Texture From a File | How to load a texture from a file and process it for use by the shader pipeline. |
| How To: Compile a Shader | How to compile a shader for use in your graphics application. |
Graphics APIs
| Topic | Description |
|---|---|
| Direct3D 11 | Documentation of the core APIs for the virtualization of the GPU and its resources, and for drawing graphics using a unified shader model. |
| Direct3D HLSL | Reference documentation for High-Level Shader Language, the syntax and rules used to define shader programs executed as part of the graphics pipeline in a unified shader model. |
| DirectX Graphics Interface (DXGI) | Documentation of the low-level APIs used to acquire the GPU interface and system resources. |
| Direct2D | Documentation for the Direct2D APIs, which support the drawing of 2D primitives. Typically, Direct2D is used for custom user interfaces, image processing and batching, and simple games. |
| DirectWrite | Documentation for the DirectWrite APIs, which support custom font rendering and scaling. |
| Windows Imaging Component (WIC) | Documentation for the WIC APIs, which are used for reading and managing different bitmap image formats. |
| DirectDraw Surfaces (DDS) for textures | Documentation for the DDS APIs, which are used for 2D texture compression and decompression in conjunction with the WIC APIs. |
| DirectXMath | Documentation for the DirectXMath APIs, which support Direct3D with a set of types and functions suited for 3D real-time graphics development. (Formerly XNAMath.) |
| DirectCompute | Documentation for the DirectCompute APIs, used for compute or general-use shader functionality. |
Audio, media, and input APIs
| Topic | Description |
|---|---|
| XAudio2 Programming Guide | Top-level node for the XAudio2 audio API conceptual documentation. |
| XAudio2 Programming Reference | Top-level node for the XAudio2 audio API reference documentation. |
| XInput Programming Guide | Top-level node for the XInput controller API conceptual documentation. |
| XInput Programming Reference | Top-level node for the XInput controller API reference documentation. |
| Media Foundation | Top-level node for the Media Foundation (MF) media (audio/video) playback API documentation. Typically, MF is used in games for soundtrack playback, whereas XAudio2 is used for dynamic audio. |
Port to DirectX 11
| Topic | Description |
|---|---|
| Migrating to Direct3D 11 | Basic guidance for moving your DirectX 9 codebase to DirectX 11. |
| Dual-use Coding Techniques for Games | Detailed blog post on developing for both DirectX 9_* and DirectX 11_* feature levels in a single application. |
| Implementing shadow buffers for Direct3D feature level 9 | Guidance for implementing shadow maps under DirectX feature level 9_*. |
Work with C++
If you're an old hand with C++ on Windows platforms, things may look a little different. Here are some pointers to topics that can help you get a handle on the difference.
Note
Some of these topics exist to help you maintain your C++/CX application. But we recommend that you use C++/WinRT for new applications. C++/WinRT is an entirely standard modern C++17 language projection for Windows Runtime (WinRT) APIs, implemented as a header-file-based library, and designed to provide you with first-class access to the modern Windows API.
| Topic | Description |
|---|---|
| Visual C++ language reference (C++/CX) | High-level page that links to content related to C++. |
| Quick Reference (Windows Runtime and Visual C++) | Table that provides quick info about Visual C++ component extensions (C++/CX) operators and keywords. |
| Type system (C++/CX) | Reference content for the types that are supported by C++/CX. |
| Namespaces (C++/CX) | Reference content for the namespaces that contain C++-specific types that can be used in Windows Store apps. |
| Topic | Description |
|---|---|
| Asynchronous programming (DirectX and C++) | Learn about asynchronous and multithreaded programming for DirectX apps and games. |
| Asynchronous programming in C++ | Describes the basic ways to use the task class to consume Windows Runtime asynchronous methods. |
| task Class (Concurrency Runtime) | Reference documentation for the task class. |
| Task Parallelism (Concurrency Runtime) | In-depth discussion about the task class and how to use it. |
Additional useful libraries for Windows C++ programming
| Topic | Description |
|---|---|
| C++ Standard Template Library | Windows Runtime types play well with Standard Template Library types. Most C++ Windows Store apps use Standard Template Library collections and algorithms, except at the ABI boundary. |
| Parallel Patterns Library | PPL provides algorithms and types that simplify task parallelism and data parallelism on the CPU. |
| C++ Accelerated Massive Parallelism (C++ AMP) | C++ AMP provides access to the GPU for general-purpose data parallelism on video cards that support DirectX 11. |
Blogs and other resources
| Topic | Description |
|---|---|
| Games for Windows and DirectX blog | Regularly-updated blog from a key DirectX dev contributor, and an all-around great resource for DirectX devs. |
| Windows DirectX developer blog | The official Windows DirectX blog. |
| Shawn Hargreave's DirectX blog) | Dev blog from another well-respected Windows DirectX dev contributor. |
| DirectX Tool Kit | DirectX Tool Kit (DxTK), which contains a number of helpful support APIs for loading meshes, playing sounds, and other common behaviors. |
| DirectXTex texture processing library | DirectX Texture Processing Library (DxTEX), which contains support APIs for texture processing and compression/decompression. |