   GDI for a 2D map editor
  How efficient is GDI with VB for creating a 2D map editor?  The editor is to be tile based with a layer system (I.E. Layer one contains a set of tiles, layer two contains a set of tiles and so on.  All tiles are visible at once unless it's being covered by a tile on a higher layer.)  Something as simple as this I wouldn't think would need to take advantage of a faster API, would it?  Would GDI suffice or would DirectX be a better option?   
  Depending on how big your tile based map is, I don't think there would necessarily be a problem dependent upon your graphics API. You just have to make sure to optimize where needed. Let's take OpenGL for example. It can depth sort your geometry based on world space coordinates. This means for example that as long as you put a tile with a polygonal house on it further back along the z-axis than another tile, one will be appropriately behind the other without having to manually draw the polygons in that order. Sorry if this is obvious but don't use immediate mode and make use of your vertex arrays and display lists. Implement view frustum culling, etc. You also need to decide what type of projection you will be using. A lot of tile based games use some sort of axonometric projection. May have missed the point of your question sorry.   ;  I'm not worried about the engine itself rendering the tiles (which is using openGL btw), I've tested it and it handles it no problem.  What I want to know is how the windows GDI will work out for the map editor itself, which is seperate from the engine.   ;  GDI is plenty fast enough to handle a traditional tile-map editor. However there are certain useful effects, such as alpha blending to show layering, which are hard and/or inefficient to handle through GDI.At the end of the day it's not so much a question of whether GDI is sufficiently fast, because it is, but rather whether making GDI run fast enough is easier than using a more powerful graphics library. If you find yourself implementing incremental update schemes and the like then it's probably time to switch libraries..edit: Well, if you're not using GDI to draw the tiles themselves then what is the rest of the UI doing that you think will be inefficient? Fancy animated widgets jumping all over the screen or something?   ;  GDI is drawing the tiles in the map editor.  OpenGL is drawing them ingame.  But, you've answered my question, so thanks a bunch! =)   ;  The real question is why are you rewriting the display of your maps in the map editor and not using your game graphics engine to do this.   ;  I created a map editor using GDI with c# and it is fast enough for general use, but it will become slow if you have large map and many layers. You can feel free to use my map editor, you can download it for free, including the source codes.http://www.dannylum.com/D2DProject/index.htmlHope this help.