Hey, I've stated learning Win32 and Direct X in the intention to be programming games in the future, I do understand a fair bit of it quite easily but with books and pdf files, etc. if I don't quite understand something or if I want to know a little more about the background of why to do that, I can't ask the book to rephrase things and/or use and analogy or such.

If someone's kind enough to help (I do grasp concepts rather quickly so hopefully I shouldn't be much trouble on patience) I'm available on skype on saturdays and thursdays, if it's not enough I'm sure I could try and find a way to be online more often. The biggest detail is that to make it easier for calling times on skype or such I'm in UK, so GMT.

Thanks to anyone who takes interest

I know OpenGL quite proficiently. I don't know much about DirectX, but IMHO OpenGL is better, and is more widely supported.
If you need an OpenGL tutor I could help. In the US, Mountain Time.

I do have a big book on "learning OpenGL through game programming" but I cannot understand a word of it... Granted at the time I started reading it I didn't know about the windows message loops and how windows are created and stuff but I've gone back to it recently and it still seems very badly written.

My first hope was for OpenGL because it's more supported by microsoft (I think) and also it's a much more powerful 3D language (again I think) than D3D... Also the fact that everyone at some point has trouble with Direct X but OpenGL seems to sit in the back-ground.

The only reason I changed my mind to DirectX is that I found some good tutorials that also came with a couple Windows tutorials, and I understand it a lot easier than the OpenGL book, but it's still not written that well and there are many things it fails to mention that I have to lookup. (certain functions are mentioned and explained but the header files for which to get to these functions are not mentioned)

So anyone else that stumbles across this has a bit more info there, I suppose all that wasn't really needed, but Yeas... I would be interested in OpenGL tutorials if we can find some time to meet online?

In some respects, DirectX is better documented, but as it is Microsoft's API, they support that more so than OpenGL. OpenGL and DirectX both have their pros and cons, however I prefer OpenGL because of the portability.
For sure, I would be glad to give you some tutorials!
I'll PM you with details.

If you are planning on doing 2D games and graphics I would suggest learning a easier graphics library then Direct3D and OpenGL. One of the best and easiest to learn would be SFML which I would highly recommend. It will gradually get you into graphics programming which is some of the most intensive programming out there, so it will be much easier.

Though if you are mainly concentrating on 3D graphics you have 3 choices basically, DirectX which is the graphics API of choice when it comes to AAA games and has some amazing features like tessellation, OpenGL which is DirectX but portable and lacking a few features (In my opinion), and Orge3D which is a open source graphics API/Game engine (Kinda). Orge3D would probably be the easiest to learn out of the 3. Though DirectX is much better documented and has much better tutorials then the other 3.

Hope that helps if you run into anything you don't understand just send me a PM and I would be more then willing to help you out.

Cheers for all the info and help guys. I'd be greatful for a hand in any of them really, as long as it's clear learning and is compatible with C/C++ easily (which nearly everything is anyway)

@Zereo:
In fact OpenGL should have tessellation too already-
But I've never seen an OpenGL game perform faster than a DirectX game.

Not even the same game, like Team Fortress 2 (Recently "ported" to linux).

So my choice goes for DirectX.
I only used OpenGL in the beginning, where I was told OpenGL was better, faster and easier all together than Direct3D.
I personally don't find it a truth anymore.

Direct3D has its helper library (D3DX) who can also load textures/models for you.
It allows you to choose what RAM stores your texture (VRAM, RAM, ...), etc...

I only recommend OpenGL for your first games, just to warm up your 3D and math skills.

Anyways, when you download the DirectX SDK, you get its full documentation. You can access it from your Start Menu -> Microsoft DirectX SDK -> Windows DirectX Graphics Documentation .
You can also browse samples and their source codes.
Microsoft did really a good job documenting their things.
It's also easier to handle multiple D3D windows, each window can have its own (or even more) D3D "Device/s" with its own properties and stored textures, vertex buffers, compiled shaders...

The only bad thing is, when an user ALT+TABs out of the window (or when another 3D applications takes a lot of VRAM and your VRAM gets freed), your window will have to reload textures and models again, whenever it can. ( There are dedicated functions to test when one of the above happened, there are lots of tutorials )

Well as I've said I seem to be getting on well with the DirectX tutorials I'm doing (although it failed to mention I need to download the SDK and include the d3d9x.h header for a certain part, which led to some confusion).
Also I don't think the maths of 3d should be a problem as I'm in college studying A-level Maths/Mechanics/Physics at AS and finding them pretty awesome!

So @EssGeEich Do you have any tutorials or such which I could use to double check my work (when offline) or of course for learning if it's better than the tutorial I have currently

EssGeEich wrote:
Anyways, when you download the DirectX SDK, you get its full documentation. You can access it from your Start Menu -> Microsoft DirectX SDK -> Windows DirectX Graphics Documentation . You can also browse samples and their source codes.

Once you did open the CHM file, just go to:

Direct3D 9
Programming Guide for Direct3D 9
Getting Started
Devices
Creating a Device (Direct3D 9)

_______________
You don't want to download the SDK just to view the guide?
Equivalent HTML pages here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/it-it/library/windows/desktop/bb219838(v=vs.85).aspx
__________________________________________
It won't tell you WHERE the code goes, but you should be able to find out.
Otherwise, I don't know any free online DirectX tutorial.
Just google for some e-book or look into http://www.directxtutorial.com (But after a bit it goes premium-only, but you should be able to draw 3D textured polys by the time)

Hey thanks a lot man... And it just so happens that that's the website that I've been using for my learning but as I also mentioned the do miss an awful lot of info out...
But again cheers, and I've downloaded the sdk now so I'll take a look at the reference, again thanks a lot guys.