Alright, I'm new the gaming. I have a good amount of C++ experience but have no graphics experience. I want to try to create a simple game, maybe black jack or tic-tac-toe, but I want to incorporate some graphics, possibly with DirectX. I need some help as to where to get started. I've tried looking at about 5 directx tutorials now and am getting nowhere and I'm getting very frustrated. :( Any advice. I may go out an buy some books later. Any titles I should look for?

I was hoping on sticking to C++, since I already know it.

okay, I'm going to check out sdl. Out of curiousity, if I want to make a game that will run in windows, inside a window... do I need to know directx?

SDL will be perfectly fine for that (unless you want it to run inside a GUI element in a window, in which case things get a little more tricky and would require you to play around with the SDL source a bit).

*sigh*
Okay, I'm trying to install SDL with visual C++. I'm trying this tutorial: http://pgdc.purdue.org/sdltutorial/sdl_setup.html.

I got to the end. It compiled fine but when it tried to build, I got this error. I've been getting all build errors with VC++ with other tutorials also.


--------------------Configuration: sdl test - Win32 Debug--------------------
Linking...
msvcrt.lib(MSVCRT.dll) : error LNK2005: _exit already defined in LIBCD.lib(crt0dat.obj)
msvcrt.lib(MSVCRT.dll) : error LNK2005: _strncpy already defined in LIBCD.lib(strncpy.obj)
msvcrt.lib(MSVCRT.dll) : error LNK2005: _fprintf already defined in LIBCD.lib(fprintf.obj)
msvcrt.lib(MSVCRT.dll) : error LNK2005: _fclose already defined in LIBCD.lib(fclose.obj)
msvcrt.lib(MSVCRT.dll) : error LNK2005: __isctype already defined in LIBCD.lib(isctype.obj)
LIBCD.lib(crt0init.obj) : warning LNK4098: defaultlib "msvcrt.lib" conflicts with use of other libs; use /NODEFAULTLIB:library
Debug/sdl test.exe : fatal error LNK1169: one or more multiply defined symbols found
Error executing link.exe.

sdl test.exe - 6 error(s), 1 warning(s)

Oh, I should also say that this tutorial uses Visual Studio .NET, but I only have VC++. I didn't think it would matter much. I managed to get through everything except in the middle when I was supposed to:

"Right-click on the name of your project in the Solution explorer and select "Properties".

Select the "code Generation" on the left. On the right, select the "Runtime Library" pull down menu and choose Multi-Threaded DLL or Multi-Threaded Debug DLL if you wish to use debugging. Hit OK."

I had no 'code Generation' tab under the properties

I get a similar error with borland.