DirectDraw Overlay Library

Project Description
An unmanaged C++ library to create, manage and draw to DirectDraw overlays. A C++/CLI wrapper for .NET clients is included.

DirectDraw overlays are special DirectDraw surfaces that are shown over everything else, including full-screen games and applications. They can be used to implement programs like XFire that display information during full-screen game operation.

License
The library is licensed under the zlib/libpng license. The sample is licensed under the MIT license.

Status
The library and samples are in beta. They seem to be working fine on pre-Windows-Vista systems, but are experiencing problems under Vista. The managed wrapper is available in the latest source, and is packaged as a library in 0.5b Managed.

Details on the sample can be found here.

How to get it
Check the project releases. The latest unmanaged release is 0.5 Beta, and the latest managed release is 0.5b Managed.

How to build it
To build the library and its tests:

1. Download Boost
2. Set the environment variable BOOST to point to its location
3. Build the library project with Visual Studio

To build the sample:

1. Download wxWidgets 2.8.3
2. Build the configurations "Debug Unicode DLL" and "Release Unicode DLL"
3. Set the environment variable WXWIN to point to the wxWidgets root folder
4. Build the sample project with Visual Studio