From: John W. Ratcliff To: gamedev@panorama.poly.edu Subject: GD: The True Purpose of DirectX??!? Date: Saturday, March 15, 1997 9:47 PM After spending an extensive period of time studying various Microsoft API systems I believe I have discovered a terrible conspiracy. One that is dark, secret, corrupt, and filled with more mystery than the innards of the corpse of a deal alien on a FOX network autopsy special. I am but a simple man. Practically Amish when you really sit right down and think about it. A strange creature borne in the dark of the night. I began by programming Altair computers, entering machine code instructions by flipping bits on a set of swtiches and viewing my output on a set of bright LED's. At some point in my life, vague and distant in my memory now, I graduated to Fortran punch cards and began to expose my primitive mind to the mysteries of the transistor as revealed through the glowing green tubes in the computer center. My only female companionship would be the attractive comp-sci major who let me pretend to be her friend because I did all of her programming assignments.. (But she really did like me, I mean, for real..) Then God Wozniak shined upon me and I was awakened into the brilliance of his liberation. Soon I became immersed in the world of the Von Neuman machine, reveling in the unbridled glory of the 6502 microprocessor and encountered complete freedom, unbounded by literal thousands of bytes of ram all processing information at a mind boggling rate of 1mhz. (That's a whole *MILLION* cycles per second for you high level language programmers out there.) Over the years I honed my craft, gradually learning more and more advanced assembly languages. At a certain point microprocessors were invented which emulated high level languages to such a degree that they performed equally poorly in either language. Thus the world was introduced to the Motorola 68000 series of processors. Now, we fast forward to the late 20th century. Here young men and women bustle about madly trying to reinvent themselves faster than disco balling MMX engineers. We are, of course, now incapable of producing code faster than the evolution of hardware platforms, but we laugh in the face of such madness. For we know, as all good little children know, that with the dawning of the new millenium the world is fast approaching a central point where human evolution will enter a state of chaotic bifurcation. At this point in time we will all suffer a vast cataclymic shudder that will decimate the population of the planet and render our souls into shards. But we need not weep, nor fear, this forteld rending. Time is an illusion created by our weak egos. The spindly children with large vacuous eyes which will replace the current species are far more advanced than we pale and pathetic pretzel eating cheribum. Where do these children from the far off land come from? How did they manage to take over our world? Why is it our fate to be reduced to ashes and memories which are only reflected as a tiny ripple in the fabric of the Universe? I have an idea...weakly formed..perhaps induced by delusion..but one that is beginning to make sense to me now. As I have struggled over the last months with this wretched beast called Microsoft Windows and, worse yet, DirectX, strange thoughts have entered my brain. Maybe it was the time I invoked the procedure WINVFXCPUREAKUPARKLLS. Or, perhaps it was the time that I had to track through 35 header files, a total 60,000 lines of code, to ultimately find out that WINVFXCPUREAKUPARKLLS.actually was a #define to "char *"..... Or, maybe it was the moment when I realized I was supposed to invoke 47 enumerate functions nested 16 levels deep to return the contents of a true/false variable.... Or...I know..I know what it was..ultimately...it was the time that I invoked a Microsoft User Friendly API call (tm) and it returned the error code of -9.34322343E32343+5432435ie-342324. After searching fractal space for several days I finally located the true identity of this return code only to find that it indicated "Function Call not Yet Implemented, wait for v1.034". Or...was that really it??? Was it perhaps the time that my application was finally debugged, finally working, after having going through endles iterations, gyrations, and protestations to get it to function with an API who's gensis could only have been the true embodiment and spirit of the anti-christ in our time...that I received an update CD from Microsoft Corporation labled v4.0234234423423432432z which when installed changed the format and parameters for every single function call in the entire API set? Was that the straw that broke this camel's back? Maybe... I don't know. I used to not think I was a dumb man. I never graduated from that college that I attended where I helped the pretty girl with her homework. Instead I got a job programming computer video games. What a silly and irresponsible youth I was. Without a formal education how could I appreciate or understand the value of creating 1,234,323,242 header file dependencies to prototype a single function call? How could I ever manage to grasp such an advanced concept? Who I am? An aged 6502 assembly hacker who still programs 20% of his application in these arcane and savage languages, of no use but to a beast? I know now I must simply be mad. I am a dinasour in modern society. I am an uneducated and uncouth soul. I am surly to be replaced the vacant eyed gray skinned children borne of my alien abductee friends. This must be the case...for..and I must share this now..I have come to the firm conclusion... *THAT THE EXPRESS PURPOSE OF MICROSOFT CORPORATION IS  TO PRODUCE API'S WHICH ARE SO INSIDEOUS, SO ARCANE, SO FULL OF RAW *EVIL* THAT THEY REDUCE PRODUCTIVITY OF ALL OTHER SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS ON THE PLANET TO *ZERO*. Of course, now, I'm simply mad........... 2112, Omega point. ----------