I'm spending days, becoming weeks, of aggravation, trying to save myself just that. I want to write a game. Maybe I should start simple again, just to get into the groove of an environment. I want to write a game for windows. In c. (or c++, whatever). A tetris clone is really as far as I've gotten before, and I've done that in two different environments, and... I'm all confused. I will be, essentially, starting fresh; perhaps redoing groovy tetris to start, perhaps jumping straight to 3d...

This makes some good points: http://www.gamedev.net/reference/design/features/makegames/default.asp

I'm looking at, for compilers:

• DJGPP -- I used this a few times, didn't really like it, but it may have matured? free.
• mingw -- free, clean, simple
• lcc -- Nice enough. Clean. $500 for commercial use
• visual c++ 6.0 (old, yes, and nasty, yes)
• gcc?

Then for graphics:

• Allegro (easy under DJGPP), does 3d with "ex3d" -- nothing really fancy, lots of manual 3d making. an insane number of doclinks
• SDL
• PLIB seems nice, maybe. Is it mature? I'm not sure. I don't even know how to tell. I wish I knew what I was doing
• OGRE -- an object-oriented graphics rendering engine; several orders of magnitude more than I need to start with, I think, but I'd like to be able to move here for later games... perhaps... [[getting started with vc++7]]
• Crystal Space -- perhaps more of a package than I want for simple 3d, non-fps games?
• OpenGL -- low level, extremely cool, ... I feel that I should start here, perhaps? [[gcc]] [[tutorials, tending towards linux]] [[(toolkit faq)]]
• GLUT -- glut is well-suited to learning opengl, simple, easy, and small. but not good for a large program with a sophisticated user interface</a>

For sound:

• FMOD -- it's a bit expensive if I want to shareware ($100 license/platform) or *really* publish ($1000-$4000 per platform), but seems to be creme de la creme...
• Housemarque aka midas -- another free for free use sound lib, "contact" for commercial use
• JgMod -- MOD playing engine for allegro.

Installers:

• Create Install -- $150, thirty day free trial...

Subnotes:

• OpenGL, Mingw32 and Allegro + DirectX
• Achieving a stable simulator
• on code portability
• optimizing video, sound, ... -- all out of my price range, for now
• Mysql OpenGL screensaver -- very cool tutorial for windows (vc++ and codewarrior 5.3)</a>