Managed DirectX® 9 Kick Start: Graphics and Game Programming

Choosing the Game

While many of the more advanced features of 3D programming haven't been discussed yet, there has been enough basic ground covered to write a simple 3D game. You will use the knowledge gained thus far, plus add a few new things.

Before we actually begin writing a game, it would be a good idea to come up with a plan. We will need to know the type of game we will be writing, the basic features it will hold, and so on. Given the limited set of topics we've covered this far, we obviously can't create something overly complex.

Instead, a simple game will be written. One of the first demo games for MS-DOS was called “Donkey,” in which the user controlled a car, and the goal was to avoid the donkeys in the road. Sounds simple enough; ...