Directx programming! Where to start from?

[freiza]

I want to start learning Directx Programming.
I am thinking to order this book, "Beginning DirectX 11 Game Programming". Is this sufficient. I haven't heard good reviews about this book. What should I do.
Is there any other good book to start with?

[Raigne]

As far as books go im not really sure. but DirectX Tutorial.com - Game Programming with DirectX can get you started with the basics.

[VirtualAce]

Well DirectX is going through a major overhaul right now thanks to upcoming Windows 8 and Metro. In the VS11 dev preview DirectX is part of the Windows SDK, D3DX has been deprecated, DirectInput officially removed in favor of XInput, and audio is done through XAct. For math in C++ you will be using the XNA math library which is sort of an ignorant name since the library (or moreso the inline code file) has nothing to do with XNA. If you want to load textures you will be left with extracting what is in the 26000 lines of DXUT, rolling your own, or downloading several 3rd party libraries that handle various file formats. Microsoft's claim is that the DDS file format is all you need...which we all know in the game world is absolutely not true and most studios have their own proprietary formats that they cling to.

I would buy the book on DirectX 11 with the knowledge that even in the dev preview MS claims that VS11 is pointing to a version of D3DX that does not exist. To get the dev preview working with DX11 requires some fiddling here and there. You might want to go with DirectX 10 and there certainly is no point in learning DirectX 9 right now since 10 and 9 are so fundamentally different in how they do things under the hood. I would even recommend you move to OpenGL except the situation over there isn't much better given the lack of features and support - read: easily supported and easily accessible features. The features are there but they are not as friendly as Direct3D.

Right now it is all up in the air until more information surfaces about Windows 8.