DelphiX Questions

[Delphimannen]

I have a little bit of experience with delphiX, but far from enough. I have difficulties with the simplest things. I am hoping anyone can answer some of my questions. I have a few of them.

Why do we have so many options of images in delphiX. What should I use, Bitmaps, Dibs, DXDibs, DXImagelists.. I'm going nuts, folks?

How can I copy an area from a surface and store that area as an image in my DXImageList?

Why should I use TDXForm instead of TForm?

What is the fastest way of representing simple graphics on my surface?

What is the difference between TDib and TDXDib?

[WILL]

Hello and welcome to PGD!

I've used DelphiX myself some few years ago and I can say that it is a nice way to learn game programming and working with graphics. It's original author "Hori" from Japan created it as a way to work with the DirectX API using Delphi at a time when there was very little else. It's a library that's near and dear to most of those that have been around since the early 2001/2002 era of Pascal game programming. I'll do my best to get you up to speed on it and how it works in general.

My first question to get an understanding of how I can help you is to ask what your level of understanding of programming is? Do you understand the basics of 'Object Oriented Programming'? And how well you understand the 'Pascal' or 'Object Pascal' languages?

Now, not to elude your questions but a few great places to start with the library would be these tutorials that have a lot of information that will help you get it set up with Delphi and how to work with graphics, sound, input controls, and so on.

DelphiGameDev.com 'How to install DelphiX' and other tutorials (some of these may be a bit out of date with some of the newer revisions to the library)

Cool Tutorials by Traveller (includes how to make a shooter and platform game using the components)

This is THE current site for getting the DelphiX and UnDelphiX components libraries (there are extra tools, demos and of course the most up-to-date versions of the library now maintained by Jaro Benes)

There were other written that covered some basics but I'm having a hard time finding them. I'll post them if I can find them.