This section pertains only to application development in Visual Basic. See DirectDraw C/C++ Tutorials.

This first tutorial deals with blitting a bitmap to the display adapter. The term blit is shorthand for "bit block transfer," which is the process of transferring blocks of data from one place in memory to another. Graphics programmers use blitting to transfer graphics from one place in memory to another. Blits are often used to perform sprite animation.

To use DirectDraw, you first create an instance of the DirectDraw object, which represents the display adapter on the computer. You then use methods to manipulate the object. In addition, you need to create one or more instances of a DirectDrawSurface object to be able to display your application on a graphics surface.

To demonstrate this, the Tutorial 1: Blitting to the Screen sample included in this SDK performs the following steps:

• Step 1: Create the Form
• Step 2: Declare Module Level Variables
• Step 2: Initialize Variables