DirectX Programmer's Reference Components

The DirectX Programmer's Reference, also known as the DirectX SDK, includes several components that address the performance issues of programming Windows-based games and high-performance applications. This section lists these components and provides a link for more information on each component.

• DirectDraw® accelerates hardware and software animation techniques by providing direct access to bitmaps in off-screen display memory, as well as extremely fast access to the blitting and buffer-flipping capabilities of the hardware. For more information, see About DirectDraw in the DirectDraw documentation.
• DirectSound® enables hardware and software sound mixing and playback. For more information, see About DirectSound in the DirectSound documentation.
• DirectMusic™ is the musical component of DirectX. Unlike DirectSound, which is for the capture and playback of digital sound samples, DirectMusic works with message-based musical data. For more information about this newest component of DirectX, see About DirectMusic.
• DirectPlay® makes connecting games over a modem link or network easy. For more information, see About DirectPlay in the DirectPlay documentation.
• Direct3D® provides a high-level Retained Mode interface that allows applications to easily implement a complete 3-D graphical system, and a low-level Immediate Mode interface that lets applications take complete control over the rendering pipeline. For more information about Immediate Mode, see About Direct3D Immediate Mode. For more information about Retained Mode, see About Retained Mode.
• DirectInput® provides input capabilities to your game that are scalable to future Windows-based hardware-input APIs and drivers. Currently the joystick, mouse, keyboard, and force feedback devices are supported. For more information, see About DirectInput in the DirectInput documentation.
• DirectSetup provides a one-call installation procedure for DirectX. For more information, see About DirectSetup in the DirectSetup documentation.
• AutoPlay is a Windows feature that starts an installation program or game automatically from a compact disc when you insert the disc in the CD-ROM drive. For more information, see About AutoPlay in the AutoPlay documentation.

The AutoPlay feature is part of the Microsoft Win32® API in the Platform SDK and is not unique to DirectX.

Among the most important parts of the documentation for the DirectX SDK is the sample code. Studying code from working samples is one of the best ways to understand DirectX. Sample applications are located in the \Mssdk\Samples\Multimedia folder of the DirectX SDK or in the DirectX code samples under the Platform SDK References section.