Dennisvb

unless you know really much about graphic hardware and stuff, it's really hard to make a game, library or engine. And yes, java is a good language!

So I guess a library or sdk will do the graphics thing for me or at least make it easier? Also would you know if that could be implemented for android if a library is used or would that be library specific?

If you are going to use slick2d you have to keep in mind that it isn't going to work on Android, so if you really want that look for another library.

Because this is the first game you are making its better to just focus on getting a game working and worry about making games for phones, like android, later.

If you look around on the Web I am sure you can find some good libraries for java. I recommend http://www.slick2d.org I don't know if it will work on Android, but I know it will work on Windows, Linux and OSX if they have java installed.

Thanks everybody! All your comments will help me for sure! I have no time to respond to all of you now, because I have no time at the moment. Just wanted to let you know I read all your comments!

I really want to be good at game programming, but I keep getting distracted. Any tips?

Thanks for your answer!

I've found this site which has a nice tutorial, but I'm getting really frustrated with the docens of missing dll files, and so many other problems that I can't even begin to understand. (http://www.gamefromscratch.com/page/Game-From-Scratch-CPP-Edition.aspx , I hope I can post this link gere, otherwise I'll remove it).

... that there is an excellent tutorial...

The catch is, it's written for VS 2010, and I do not believe SFML ships with 2012 binaries (or even 2010!) so that adds a gigantic barrier of entry for new developers. I am fairly certain 2012 and 2010 are not binary compatible, meaning you need to rebuild the C++ libraries ( like SFML for example ) for each different version.

Maybe one of these days I will download and install 2012 and make a compatible project available for the tutorials. If you search on the site, there is a post about building SFML, but at this stage it might be a bit beyond what you want to do.

That's not a good tutorial at all, because it uses an outdated version of SFML.

Thank you for all the help, it's really nice to see a community like this! It was a hard to find mistake that I switched the screen and hello surfaces in that function. I will try to fix it when I am home.
Thanks again!

 

Fixed it!

 

This is the code I have now and it works.

#include "SDL.h"
#include "SDL_image.h"
#include <iostream>

int main( int argc, char* args[] )
{
    // the images
	SDL_Surface *hello = NULL;
	SDL_Surface *screen = NULL;

	SDL_Init( SDL_INIT_EVERYTHING );

	SDL_WM_SetCaption( "Rocket 0.0.1" , NULL );

	// create the window
	screen = SDL_SetVideoMode( 640, 480, 32, SDL_SWSURFACE );

	hello = IMG_Load( "image.png" );
	if( !hello ) {
		std::cout << "ERROR: " << SDL_GetError() << std::endl;
	}

	SDL_BlitSurface( hello, NULL, screen, NULL );

	// update the screen
	SDL_Flip( screen );

	SDL_Delay( 2000 );

	// unload the image
	SDL_FreeSurface( hello );

	return 0;
}

 

The first problem was I had my image in the wrong directory and the second one was the SDL_BlitSurface problem.

Thanks everybody!

Make sure your laptop is using the hdmi output, my laptop, a xps 15, has a special button for this.