Creating a window & getting it's framebuffer?

[lofty dock]

I'm trying to write a small raytracing engine in C, and I require a framebuffer to do so. How can I create a window using the Win32 API and get it's framebuffer? I can't and do not want to use any libraries such as GLFW or SDL.

[runic knot]

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[eager cairn]

any reason why you dont want to use those ?
you normally use a graphics library and just render to a texture

those are approx. less than 50 lines of code in SDL2

[sour spruce]

It would be much easier to use sdl. If you really want to use win32 api, then you can follow the tutorial windows offers themselves
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/learnwin32/learn-to-program-for-windows

You'll have to translate some c++ code to c code though

[dull granite]

In very broad terms, you would create the window with CreateWIndowEx() which will return a handle to the window (HWND). When it comes time to draw on this window, you would obtain a handle to a device context for the window with HDC hdc = GetDC(hwnd); This device context would then be used with all the drawing primatives to actually modify the window's frame buffer. When done drawing you would release the device context with ReleaseDC(hwnd, hdc);

[lofty dock]

But isn't SDL3 out?

[eager cairn]

?

[lofty dock]

But the source code itself is 3.0

[eager cairn]

what has the version to do with anything

[lofty dock]

when i tried using it a lot of things were changed

i added it as a submodule

and linked with it in CMake

a lot of things were renamed

[eager cairn]

then read the migration guide

Ctrl+F thing_that_might_have_changed

also you can totally just use SDL2

nothing requires you to use 3

[lofty dock]

Going to use MiniFB instead

great library btw