Creating your first window

Creating a window is the first step in Windows programming. All our sprites and other objects will be drawn on top of this window. There is a standard way of drawing a window. So this part of the code will be repeated in all programs that use Windows programming to draw something.

Getting ready

You need to have a working copy of Visual Studio installed on your Windows machine.

How to do it…

In this recipe, we will find out how easy it is to create a window:

1. Open Visual Studio.

2. Create a new C++ project.

3. Select a Win32 Windows application.

4. Add a source file called Source.cpp.

5. Add the following lines of code to it:

   #define WIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN
   
   #include <windows.h>   // Include all the windows headers.
   #include <windowsx.h>  // Include useful macros.
   #include "resource.h"
   
   #define WINDOW_CLASS_NAME L"WINCLASS1"
   
   
   void GameLoop()
   {
     //One frame of game logic occurs here...
   }
   
   LRESULT CALLBACK WindowProc(HWND _hwnd,
     UINT _msg,
     WPARAM _wparam,
     LPARAM _lparam...