DirectX, I think

I need a way to make it so when someone hits a key it opens my programes window on top of a ful screen game. And then be able to close it without disrupting the game. I was thinking I had to do this with DirectX. Is this true?

Firstly Im not even sure if this is possible. Popping a window infront of a DirectX fullscreen application triggers a loss of control. Most well designed games will see this as an Alt+Tab and so suspend execution, and possibly minimize.

And if the game is not DirectX, then it wont help you here. :-\

Originally posted by Squirm
Firstly Im not even sure if this is possible. Popping a window infront of a DirectX fullscreen application triggers a loss of control. Most well designed games will see this as an Alt+Tab and so suspend execution, and possibly minimize.

And if the game is not DirectX, then it wont help you here. :-\

Yes, the application is written in DirectX. And it does spaz when you hit alt-tab. Is there any other way I might be able to go about this? I'm out of ideas.

Based on my (limited) knowledge about DirectX I don't think you can place a normal window on top of an existing directx fullscreen.

OK, thanks for the help guys.

In the DirectX 8.1 C++ samples there is a program which displays a standard GDI window over the DirectDraw surface, so it can be done but maybe not with VB. I'll have to analyze the code to see how they did it.