I've been working on my own custom control that I would like to compare to Microsoft's Cards32.dll. I have created a class object for a single card and that portion works fine. However, when I try to create another control encapsulating 52 (a deck) cards, nothing seems to work well at all. The cards are movable individually as I wanted. The problem with the entire deck control is that to allow the cards to move anywhere in the form (which I intend to simulate a card table with green felt -- just for visualization purposes) I have to set the width and height of the deck control to match that of the form. Otherwise the cards are limited to movement within the deck control. I didn't think using the Dock style of 'Fill' would be much of a problem, because anytime the form resizes, the cards can still move anywhere in the form. But now the problem is that any other controls I place on the form (maybe a label for a score) are hidden behind the deck since it takes up the entire form's space. If I SendToBack the deck, then I can see the other controls, but when the cards move, they float UNDER the controls.

My closest solution is to just not use a DeckOfCards control, but I would really like to, since I believe that's what Microsoft does, and it would make things easier. I have searched all over the Internet looking for help on this and I can never find help in this. I am slowly learning VB.NET on my own. I'm having a harder time with the advanced stuff, though. I learned the basics within a heartbeat, but the API, BitBlt, DirectX, and all advanced techniques just seem so hard to me. Any help with this project or these advanced techniques would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.