So I think that i''m ready to write a simple tetris or pacman game. so i did some research about graphic libraries and the main ones being directx and opengl, but is there anything that is more simple? im only a second year programmer is c++ and need something that i can use fairly easily. thanks

If you use the resources that are out there openGL and DirectX are easy enough to learn. Look at NeHe, there is a comprehensable source of information. Also, most of the code is written in the tutorials, so you can just cut and paste a lot of the stuff that you need. As for something that is going to do all the work for you good luck, you will always have to do some reading. You could always just do it in ASCII but it might look a little bad. But hey, you get what you put in.

Second year of C++? I wrote my first 3D (2.5D really) raycasting engine within my first 6 months of C++, then again, I had a bunch of qbasic + pascal behind me. That was using Mode 13h . There are many libraries, and stuff. Direct Draw, and OpenGL are very easy if you use code from tutorials, and things like SDL are great, because they are OS independant. If you check for tutorials, there is plenty of code out there for you to start with, and learn by. When it comes to a pacman or tetris clone, the graphics API doesn''t really make that big of a difference, because you can get it to run fast enough on any one of them.

One thing you could do is use a library such as Allegro or SDL
wich allow easy initilization and can be used across different
platforms.

quote: Original post by Travis Dane
One thing you could do is use a library such as Allegro or SDL

There are even higher-level libs based on them. Try looking at the Libraries section of the SDL web site (www.libsdl.org) to get some idea.

Peace,
Doc