   D3D Font Engine
  helloi was reading the tut on the site on how to implement text into my game, and i did it right but i dont know how to use the back buffer argument (lpddsback)heres what i did----#include <ddraw.h>HFONT fnt = CreateFont(14,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, "Tahoma");void Draw_Text(char *text, int x,int y,COLORREF color,LPDIRECTDRAWSURFACE lpdds,HFONT fnt){HDC dc; lpdds->GetDC(&dc);SetTextColor(dc,color);SetBkMode(dc, TRANSPARENT);SelectObject(dc, fnt);TextOut(dc,x,y,text,strlen(text));lpdds->ReleaseDC(dc);}then when i called the func and passed the arguments i did thisDraw_Text("Blah",0,0,RGB(0, 255, 0),lpddsback, fnt);but lpddsback is not declared in my code or the header files so i dont understand how to use it or what header file im supposed to include inorder to use it.someone please point me in the right directionthanks. 
  im a newbie to DirectDraw myself, but I think you have to declare your surface as:LPDIRECTDRAWSURFACE7, which is just what you have done with a 7 on the end.You include ddraw.h to use the surface objects im pretty sure. You also have to link the ddraw.lib file to your project. ;  Instead of passing in lpddsback, pass in your app''s LPDIRECTDRAWSURFACE object.  You should have one declared somewhere. ;  im not sure what you mean by my apps LPDIRECTDRAWSURFACE object, this is a d3d9 wrapper for a game and i just want a font function. how would i figure out the object that has to be passed? ;  Ah okay.  Just get rid of the code you are using right now, for 2 reasons.  One, it uses DirectDraw7 (not D3D9), and two, it uses GDI, which is terribly slow.Instead, check out the ID3DXFont interface.  It is very simple to use, I believe.  To create a ID3DXFont object, remember that you have to use the D3DXCreateFont() function.  If you are having trouble, do a search of the forum - there are plenty of topics on it.I hope this helps ya out a little bit. ;  ah ok ill try taking a look at the shadow rendering source code that that guy wrote, he used fontting and i believe it was d3d9.thanks 