I'm looking to build a wargame simulator (plus additional tools) that more or less functions like a virtual table top, with free-form (eg: no grid, hex or otherwise to adhere to) movement. But really, all of that is a dream unless I can figure out where to go first for graphical programming. I have my head around GUI building ala wxWindows, but as far as how to manipulate the actual tabletop area I'm at a loss as where to start. I intend on doing all of this with C++. I tried using the search feature above, but its throwing database errors back to me, so I went a head and posted. So what exactly should I be looking to use? SDL, OpenGL? Keep in mind this is going to be a topdown, flat 2D game -- much like any number of chess games out there, but without grid movement. Any direction would be greatly appreciated.

either sdl or opengl should work fine, opengl is pretty easy to set up and to use ortho view (2d view) ... as for having no grid, you can store your objects withen a list or vector (storing their raw scren co-ordinates), and only draw objects at the current screen viewport (ie if you scroll the screen down 100 pixels and your view port is 800x600 resolution you would be viewing 0 - 800 on the x axis and 100 to 700 on the y axis) ... im not to experienced in this but you could store your objects withen a quad tree where you have differnt sectors of your map, and the farther you move down the tree the more precis your co-ordinates get. i think this might be overkill for a 2d top down game.. unless your planning on making this top down 3D (ie.. warcraft III).

No, I have no intentions of going for a WC3 like game -- I merely want to simulate a table-top to move individual miniatures around. Ultimately the goal of this is to allow over the net skirmish level wargaming ala WARMACHINE, Confrontation or heck, even Mage Knight.

Looking around a bit, I see that OpenRPG is done with wxPython and from I can tell, does not use anything but Python and wxWidgets/wxPython to create such a table top environment. I don't think it is using OpenGL, SDL or any such graphics programming library.

And that's really all I am looking for -- the virtual table top to move pieces around. Pieces would be "viewable" or "clickable" as to gather information about them, say in a side panel of the GUI, to show current damage, stats, name, facing, etc. I don't even want this program to manage rules. The two people playing are still going to watch each others movments, attacks and so forth for rules checking -- no computer AI to keep things in bounds. If you've ever used a program like Apprentice to play Magic: The Gathering online, that is sorta where I am going with this.

Now to figure out how to get something like wxWindows place images, create such a table top and so forth. I feel fairly lost at this point, but I'm digging in as much as possible. It is both frustrating and exciting at the same time.