A C++ drawing framework for Windows that makes simple graphics programming as much fun as the days when computers booted directly to a BASIC prompt.

Made for beginners and classrooms. To use this framework: open Visual Studio, choose "Create a new project", select the "Windows Desktop Wizard" from the list, (give your project a name), choose "Desktop Application (.exe)" from the wizard, and check the "Empty Project" box. Then, add immediate2d.h and some new cpp file for your own code to the project. Add a #define IMM2D_IMPLEMENTATION just before #include "immediate2d.h". Finally, just declare a void run() function and Immediate2D will take care of the rest.

There is absolutely zero setup or initialization. (By default you get a 5x scaled-up 160x120 window and can draw to it in your very first line of code:

#define IMM2D_IMPLEMENTATION
#include "immediate2d.h"
void run() {
  DrawPixel(80, 20, LightBlue);
}

Includes a nice set of examples with exercises taking a student from drawing a single dot (shown above) all the way to simple games and physics simulations.

Everything you need is documented in immediate2d.h and a Quick Reference is supplied that fits everything on one page.

Visit the Releases page to download and play with pre-built versions of the examples.

A one-line example with exercises to familiarize the student with the "y goes down" computer graphics convention.

Demonstrates simple animation in a while loop.

Shows a little bit of mouse interaction and uses the exercises to build up some rudimentary UI concepts.

More mouse interaction through a simple paint example.

A graphing calculator in 8 lines of code.

Demonstrates how little you really need to do something like draw text to the screen (by packing each glyph into a single int).

An adaptation of the classic NIBBLES.BAS snake game example that was included with QBASIC.

An implementation of Joe Stam's 2003 paper "Real-Time Fluid Dynamics for Games" that fits in about 250 lines of C++.

An adaptation of Kevin Beason's smallpt ray tracer.

Demonstrates image loading while recreating an effect from the 1993 PC/DOS game "Jetpack Christmas Special!"

A remake of an old high school project of mine, demonstrating how to load images from resources embedded right in the application. A basic level editor is included, which is also fun to tinker with.