Before you can do this tutorial, you will need the following:

1.  Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition (or Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition)*.
2.  A knowledge of basic C++.
3.  A burning desire to make games.

* - other versions of C++ compilers will also run DirectX, however, there are some language specific changes you may need to make in each of the demo applications.

Before you go into the depths of Windows and DirectX code, let's back up and look at the broad overview of how a game is supposed to operate.  If you don't know that, you certainly won't know how to use certain code.  In this lesson we will briefly cover how a game works and the sequence in which code is essentially run.

In order to program games, you must understand Windows code.  This lesson we will cover the very basics of building a Windows program by writing a program that puts a simple message box on the screen.

This lesson will cover how to build a blank window from scratch, and all the little bits of information you will need to know to handle this code properly while programming games.

This is your first lesson into the subject of speed and game efficiency.  Learn a new function that will get rid of a lot of idle time your program can easily and unnecessarily create.