Hi, im new here.. I hail from another game deving site, and I run the small game team "chronox design" currently in between games :-) well recently certain events have made me switch from a windows computer to a debian one - with gnome I want to do some gamedeving and am not sure what to use I do a little of java, but not enough to create any game.. there is python but I dont really know what that is.. any reccomendations? thanks!

Hi and Welcome to GameDev.

Here is some Python information. That should help you getting started. [smile]

If you already know a programming language (like Java), it is to a large extent just a question of picking up a set of libraries to make games with.

[Thread moved to Everything Unix, with a link left in For Beginners]

thank you for the help everyone!
I didnt know java could really do offline 2d things (i.e not applets)..
I found only one bit of example code showing how to and it looked like it used java 1.1 or whatever...

I did dabble in C++, making a veery basic ASCII flight sim but I dont have C++ on my debian (so far as I can see) and if I did I have been told you couldnt use my programs on windows computers, and lets face it.. most people use windows.
im looking into java web start at the moment
oh and for an IDE im using netbeans, simply because it came in one bundle of java, and at the time I didnt know how to install packages :)
ill read the newbie thing

most linux distro's come with gcc which is a c/c++ compiler that you can use. You can make your code cross platform (using something like SDL or QT), and then rebuild on a windows pc for a windows version.

If you wish to stick with Java, try eclipse, its currently the most recommended Java IDE I know of.

thank you for the replies, its true that I dont like netbeans at_all
its complicated looking and nasty, theres too much diving through menus and trying to find the actual class files
it seems to complile .jars but they dont actually work...