Right now, a few of my friends and I are working on our first game- a freeware space shooter. We are using C++ (unmanaged) directX 9, with DirectDraw7 as our graphics package. Development is going well, but I keep looking at a feature on the horizon that we will have to implement. You see, between levels, we will allow you to improve your vehicle, which will require a GUI of some sort- I was really hoping to use a custom-painted win32 "child window" GUI, but I am utterly clueless about how to put the components on top of a directX surface. Could someone lend me a hand? Am I giving enough information about my program for you to be helpful?

-Slinky

Something like this (http://www.gamedev.net/reference/programming/features/gui/)?

Something rather exactly like that. Thank you!