Karsten_

We use a continuous integration server at work (Atlassian Bamboo) which attempts to build the software on all the platforms we are targetting. This is really useful because it prevents us from ignoring a platform for long periods of time. When it tries to build, it will fail and give us an email so that we can then go and do a better job of maintaining the port.

 

If you are an experienced UNIX/Linux developer, then you probably have a fairly good knowledge of writing portable software anyway to cater for the many different Linux / BSD distributions we use today. Using the Mingw toolchain (and certainly Cygwin) will create a sufficiently UNIX-like development environment for you to work in anyway (Arguably more UNIX-like than Ubuntu ;).

Making games of a graphical nature doesn't really need a GUI library. Just set up an OpenGL rendering context, or a 2D canvas in any way possible (Java, Obj-C, C#), then you can easily use C for the rest.

 

How good are you at C? If you have spent quite a while mastering it, then I don't see a problem why you cant use it.

Especially since the popular way to develop games nowadays is using the Component Entity Model which favors composition over inheritance and so using an OO language is not necessary.

 

That said, C can handle object orientation perfectly fine which you can see in pretty much any C GUI library (Motif, Gtk+, etc..)

 

In other words, you don't need to spend time learning a new language and you can start making software. 80%+ of the UNIX world writes user-land programs in C so it is certainly capable.

All VS Expresses are free forever. What happens is that you have register after 30 days.

... so what you really mean then is that it is free for an unspecified amount of time until Microsoft stops distributing these keys ;)
If you download the express edition of choice as an .iso, as I recall, this doesn't need to be activated (DRM free).

I think it is an elitist thing personally. Some people (especially in game development communities) put C++ so high up on a pedestal that it is becoming "scary" for newcomers. This is annoying, especially for those who do find the language to be easier for what they want to achieve.

 

If you feel like you should be learning C++, then go for it. I personally wouldn't recommend anything else (Other than C if the project is not game related).

I know very little about audio programming other than "makin' it work" so take this with a pinch of salt ;)

I have been interested in the idea of audio shaders but since sound from a file is always going to be the same, does it have as much need for a shader to alter it at runtime? It can be manipulated offline on the development machine, then stored and ran at runtime. I always assumed this was why sound shaders wern't used.
Similar to why you might not pass a video through a shader during your game. (Novelty video effects in VLC aside ;)

Graphics however is generated on the fly (i.e depending on how the player moves and interacts) so I guess this is why each frame needs to be shaded.

EDIT: Nope, I have thought about this further and decided that the same .wav file (i.e shooting) might want to be used whether you are underwater or not. In which case a shader to make it sound muffled would be great.