Console (CMD like) in a DirectX application

One option would be to just use OutputDebugString which outputs to Visual Studio's Output-window.

If you want a Windows-style CMD instead, this SO-answer seems to create one for you.

I want to provide an alternative way to achieve both a console and a Window to draw your graphics to. Configure your project to be a default console project and create the window manually through the WinAPI. This way you have both a console and a window to draw your graphics to. If you later decide you do not need the console anymore you can do

ShowWindow(GetConsoleWindow(), SW_HIDE);

at the beginning of your program and the console wont show up anymore.

There are many Window libraries for C++ on Windows, but it is also easy to roll your own Window class, which supports all the features you need.

There's no easy way to do this. You could have a class like...

class Console
{
private:
    /*
     * Stores each line inputted to render later.
     */
    std::list<std::string> lines;
public:
    /*
     * Check the syntax of the inputted line, execute if valid, and add it to the list of lines.
     * Return true if the syntax was valid.
     */
    bool processCmd(const std::string& line);
}

But that example is very elementary. Check out the Quake source, that may be a good learning point.

On the rendering end, you need to temporarily render in 2d, so you can draw the console, then switch back to 3d.

EDIT 1:

For parsing you could use boost::program_options. There are some other libraries too, for example (quick Googpe search): http://optionparser.sourceforge.net/ https://github.com/FlorianRappl/CmdParser https://github.com/jarro2783/cxxopts

These are designed to parse the CLI, but can be used for your task.