Im wondering if anyone knows of some good books that'll help with learning the windows side of the game. Casey mentions alot how he will make the platform layer better for release, but I can't find any good reading material on it. Most of what I'm finding is directx resources, or books that don't really pertain to games. Thanks in advance!

Depending on how much you already know this might be useful:

Windows API Tutorial

It is not specifically about games, but it is free and the author is knowledgeable. Just a heads up - the author builds a C++ based OO framework around win32 (at least the parts he uses) which is, of course, not necessary.

I have been following this tutorial, it is probably a bit old but it still helps to understand the basics of Win32 api.

http://www.winprog.org/tutorial/

http://www.functionx.com/win32/

This contains some basics for window creation and gdi.

The classic reference is Programming Windows, Fifth Edition by Charles Petzold. It came out during the Win95/98 & NT era. All the information is still valid today and it covers everything from window creation, unicode, message loops, mouse/keyboard input to midi and basic threading. All examples are in plain C and use the Win32 API. It not specific for games, but contains all the info we'll probably be using for the Win32 platform layer.

The other great resource that goes into very technical details of the Win32 API is Raymond Chen's blog The Old New Thing. It's a gold mine of info you can't find elsewhere, but you'll have to do a bit of searching to find particular topics.

Thanks everyone, I have alot of reading to do, which is always a good thing hahaha.