Quote Originally Posted by Niya View Post
Really? I was in hell trying to figure out how to use a 3D API to render 2D graphics. The Demon Arena link in my signature was one such project where I faced an uphill battle trying to figure out how I was going to hardware accelerate the graphics. I eventually gave up trying to understand the massively complicated world of 3D graphics and settled on using XNA which wraps DirectX into a more friendly API that could handle 2D graphics without me having to become a 3D graphics expert. All I wanted was a fast way to blend sprites over a kind of light map to produce a glowing effect. Don't underestimate how difficult Direct3D is for us mere mortals to wrap our heads around
There is no difficulty because 2D is in 3D. Just create an orthographic projection matrix and draw quads with textures. Of course you need some initial code but it's quite simple if you have worked ever with Direct3D. Direct2D works using this tehnique as far as i know (tessellates all the primitives to triangles).