Reddit mentions of Introduction To 3D Game Programming With Directx 9.0C: A Shader Approach (Wordware Game and Graphics Library)

Try Frank Luna. I learnt DX9.c years ago with his book, it's really good at explaining the concepts behind what your doing:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Introduction-Game-Programming-DirectX-9-0c/dp/1598220160/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1426068873&sr=8-2&keywords=frank+luna

There's a DX10 and DX11 book too, but I've never read them.

this is the book ive been reading to try and get some DirectX graphics going:

http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Game-Programming-Direct-9-0c/dp/1598220160/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1323366015&sr=8-6

well written, very good read.

If you're interested in programming games (which it sounds like you are), I would suggest learning DirectX. Using a pre-made engine will never teach you as much as learning to create the engine yourself (when it comes to programming, that is). Pick up this book, it will explain everything you need to know to create a graphics engine (and there are PDF and CHM versions you can find online).

Make a simple engine based on the book's examples. Then try to do things in your own way. Google for "component-based design" and see if you can implement an engine that uses that.

More specifically, you should use absolutely use C++. You should start with a 2D game (or a text-based game). Don't expect to do anything major design-wise; it's about building your skills.

In addition, you probably haven't learned much in the ways of linear algebra (which is what graphics and a lot of gameplay is based on). I don't know any specific resources, but you should understand vectors (dot and cross products) and matrices (how to create scale, rotation, and translation matrices and how they have those effects on vectors).

Good luck!

Hi there, TerraNisi was with this stuff. Just a bunch of Windows API C stuff. I'm surprised you like the knight game! I thought it totally sucked and was embarrassed to put it up on the page :)

For C/C++/DirectX I'd recommend trying to look at tigr. tigr has some very advanced code in there, but it's all dense and in one place. Anyone can slowly lookup piece by piece on the internet and learn about the DirectX or OpenGL implementation. The author, Richard Mitton, is a grumpy but generally nice guy. One could probably email him with a well thought out question and he'd be happy to answer. Just recently I was asking a question to him about his PNG loader/saver :)

It takes time to grind through since it's a lot to learn, but it if it's what you want to work on then totally worth it. For books and math I did like this one by Frank Luna. Again, it's a lot to learn, but once you learn it you know it forever.

If you want to learn the basics get this book

That is where I started.

For overall C++ I recommend Sams Teach Yourself C++ in 24 Hours. It is a really good book and got me through a few of my introduction modules in Uni. Once you have the basics down, I found the best book for getting started with DirectX 9 was this. The Author really knows his stuff and you start from the absolute basics of graphical programming and work up to some really cool stuff by the end. Again it is book I have used and have had great results from it.
Hope these will help you on your way.