Direct3D

Yet another screen shot of Dragon Siege?

But wait!
I can see through the income - expense scroll!
Yes! indeed you can.
This is one of the free and quite common features available when using 3D hardware to render graphics.

Yesterday I've incorporated Direct3D support for Dragon Siege. The Direct3D details are abstracted behind the graphics subsystem interfaces, so Direct Draw can still be used by simply changing the implementation behind the graphics subsystem interfaces with the Direct Draw abstract factory. However I think the support for Direct Draw will be removed in future. There are no convincing advantages of using Direct Draw over Direct3D.

• Direct3D has a lot of extra features such as rotation, alpha blending and scaling.
  
• The Direct Draw .NET API is deprecated.
  
• Direct3D is a lot faster than Direct Draw since the hardware GPU reliefs the CPU of some processing

OpenGL support will definitely be added in the nearby future.

Using the 3D hardware unlocks a great number of possible features in Dragon Siege. Some of these features were imperative for the progress of the game play in Dragon Siege.
I name but a few:

• Large variety of monster colors and sizes
  
• Proper coloring and identification of player units and buildings
• Semi transparent effects and lighting effects
  
• Use of alpha anti-aliased sprites
  

I'm excited to take on these features!