Rendering graphics to desktop

[Mushroom Realm]

kindof like how those little screenmate things do

[Zaei]

Could use regions to do it.

Z.

[Mushroom Realm]

whats regions?

[Zaei]

MSDN it =).

Z.

[transcendental]

This is the MFC way of doing, copied from the book 'Practical Visual C++ 6".

// ** Get a pointer to the desktop window
CWnd * pDesktop = GetDesktopWindow();
// ** Get a pointer to it's device context
CDC * pDC = pDesktop->GetWindowDC();

//* Do your drawing here
// pDC->blahblah()
// After drawing

pDesktop->ReleaseDC(pDC); 

Bcos the above code draws straight into the desktop, you must make reparations and clean up in the WM_DESTROY message.

// ** tell windows to redraw its desktop and all child windows

GetDesktopWindow->RedrawWindow(NULL,NULL,
RDW_ERASE+RDW_INVALIDATE+RDW_ALLCHILDREN+RDW_ERASENOW); 

If u want to do it the win32 API, I think it is not difficult to figure it out as

"In most cases, you'll find that the MFC class member function is implemented as a call to the native API" --Visual C++ 5 Bible

I have to say this, before I get shot down, that MFC does not encapsulate all the Win32 APIs.

I'm also interested to make a screen saver (after I'm finished with my current project) but I will do it the Win32 API's way bcos I can choose not to ShowWindow().

[transcendental]

I tried changing the extension of screen saver that came with windows from *.scr to *.exe and execute them by double clicking.

They showed me a options dialog for the screen saver

If I double-clicked the same file with *.scr extension, it is the screen saver.

Of course, before that, I copied the file to another directory.

[CornedBee]

You can choose not to ShowWindow with MFC. Look at the CYourApp::InitInstance method.

[CornedBee]

A screensaver is only an executable with the extension changed to .scr, which accepts a special set of parameters. You can look it up somewhere in the MSDN.

[Mushroom Realm]

i want to draw to desktop (that looks like its drawing to a window). i was gonna use setpixel, will it still work right?

[transcendental]

Setpixel is extremely slow. Try to use Bitblt() if possble.

[transcendental]

Originally posted by CornedBee
You can choose not to ShowWindow with MFC. Look at the CYourApp::InitInstance method.

Thanks.

[Zaei]

Use regions... =).

Z.