How do I load and display bitmap resources?

[shadowmouse]

Hi,
I've made a bitmap spritesheet of all the sprites for my game which is located in ".\\Sprites\\Spritesheet". I have then used ResEdit to make a rc file which I've included in my project. As I am new to windows specific programming, I have no idea of how to load this spritesheet to memory and display all or parts of it in a premade window (made via WinBGIm). Thanks for any help.

[knn9]

You can load the bitmap resource with LoadImage():

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms648045%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

How you draw it really depends. In Windows there's GDI, GDI+, Direct2D, Direct3D, and OpenGL. Then there are libs like SDL and SFML. You should probably pick a graphics API and learn that.

[shadowmouse]

Thanks for the quick reply!
I've already looked around MSDN and I really don't get it. I was hoping that you could explain how to use the LoadImage function because all the tutorials I've found assume a sound knowledge of all windows-specific types, function e.t.c. As I said, I already have winBGIm set up, so I may be able to use that but I wondered whether winAPI or windows.h have any functions for displaying images.

[knn9]

I don't think I can explain it any better than MSDN. The thing about the documentation is sometimes you have to use it like a wiki and follow links to topics you don't understand until the big picture is clear.

I could give an example of loading and drawing a bitmap but if you don't understand some of the fundamentals of windows programming then I doubt it will be of much use.

[shadowmouse]

Could you give an example of how to load a bitmap to memory, clip it so that you have a new bitmap that is only a fraction of the larger one, then display it with Direct 2D (please no error handling). To be specific, the bit I find most confusing is the creation of objects to do tasks rather than just a function for it and the highly shortened type names that mean that I don't know what the type is. I find it much easier to learn how something works if I have an example that is actually of the thing that I want it to do.

EDIT: I've made a program which I think should work but it doesn't have a definition of any of the functions or types (IWICStream, SUCEEDED() etc). What header files / libraries do I need to include. I've included windows.h and unknwn.h but it still doesn't work. My rc file also has #include <richedit.h> and include <commctrl.h>.

EDIT2: I've removed the things that it didn't have definitions of and for some reason they weren't used and I've managed to get it through the steps for loading a resource without it throwing an error, but I don't know how to render it with direct 2d. Could you help please? Also because I haven't managed to display it, I don't know whether it has any bugs in it which didn't result in an error.