I have no prior experience in game development but I would like, as a hobby, to try to make my first game. I want to create a text-driven game using photograph-like pictures in the background where textboxes appear to explain what is going on. The user should be able to choose alternatives from a list which will progress the game.

My question is; what graphics library/engine do I need for this? I have some experience with programming in general but I am far from an expert in any language. I was thinking of trying c++ and using the SDL libraries. I was also looking at java and the LWJGL which would probably be the easiest in terms of programming but can i do the job (photograph-like quality)?.

Thanks for any input on this

Pretty much any graphics library can render pictures in the background, photograph-like or not. Adding a few textboxes here and there isn't very performance intensive either. You should be fine with whatever library you choose.

Hi @theMagnitude

There are a lot of frameworks you can use for your target. Talking about the game engines I have tryied, I can recommend you libGDX (Java) or Cocos2d-x (C++, Javascript), two great game libraries for 2D games.

On the other hand, there are game engines like Unity or Unreal which are more used in professional enviroments.

Personally, I prefer libraries instead of big game engines to start making little games because them can give you more basic knowledge about how game works internally, and them are less overloaded of functionallities you don't need for your game.

Other libraries you can see are, for example:

• Corona SDK
• GameMaker
• Godot Engine
• WaveEngine

The problem is that with so many options, anybody doubts about which of them is the perfect game engine. My recommendation is that don't think too much about it because probably all of them cover your necessities.

Choose any of them for your target platform and programming language you want and start making games!

Wow there are really so many options out there! Ok, but it seems that my game is basic enough that any game library will handle it. I think I will go with something in Java perhaps libGDX like recommended. Thanks for the input!