...emotional enough to have you here.

Wait, you are here already. :)

Ok, then title is Direct3D AND DirectDraw.

Seems it is a time when neither pure hardware accelerated engine, nor DirectDraw one is ideal. Direct3D shall be around DirectX 7.0, pure DirectDraw is losing support and may cause drivers problems quite soon.

So I am thinking of taking a double burden and making an engine with support for both. There are Pro and Cons I see.

Pro.

More antient computers support so bigger players base.
More power in game support ("Step 1, in drop down menu of game loader try to chose "Direct3D" instead of "DirectDraw"").
Quite easy to implement and switch between (simple loader, and pure virtual class for graphix interface. Design will be expandable also).

Con.

More time to code (not for me, I have DirectDraw engine from some of my old games, will take couple days to convert and clean it).
In DirectDraw it will take time to implement some features which are readily available for accelerated version, like turning picture for # degrees.
Time when 95% of computers will have DirectX 7.0+ installed are not so far from now.


Soooo, questions is here: is it some other pro or cons I do not see? Have anyone tried to implement this "double" design in your games?

PRO: DirectDraw/D3D always seems to be backwards compatible, I'm using dsdk9.1 but am developing for directdraw3.0.

I wouldn't worry about it. as long as you design your engine so most components are pretty modular, you can easily switch between the two relativly easy. I actually started using d3d9 and it only took me a couple of hours to turn to directdraw3 (not using any 3d obviously, a pure 2d engine)

thats my opinion anyway :)

oh yes, in addition to the above, lower end directdraw is only losing support in m$ documentation, it's all still there, and you do get some small documentation under directshow asthat still uses it for it's dvd playback and so on.. or video streaming (not looked inot it too much) so.. yes..... I'll get my coat..