Hello everyone, Im new to the forum and I searched over the site, and didnt find an answer to this. So, I was wondering, I see that Visual C++ should be used for windows development, but to be truthfull, it just confuses me. That and the express edition just seems to have alot of work before it is actually able to do anything. Im currently using dev bloodshed, but is this a program I can create "games" with? Or will I have to switch over to vc++? Are games like say, Quake done in MS visual or something else? This jsut seems really confusing to me. I dont see or understand why one cant do anything in dev bloodshed that someone in vc++ can do. Anway, any help would be great. Thanks.

Well, each compiler has its own little quirks. And no, win32 programming isn't restricted to MSVC* compilers - you can do it on pretty much any compiler provided you actually have the libraries to compile with.

I'd have to agree that I've had some bad experiences with the beta express crap, but that was mainly because of the lack-of-include-directory support. It was a nightmare for me to dump everything in the default includes. But hey, I know plenty of people using it and enjoying every minute of it. And guess what? Its the future.

You'll be fine using whatever. It really doesn't make a whole lot of a difference until much later, when you're dealing with compiler specific stuff, and even then it isn't too big a deal.

afaik ;)

Dev C++ can do everything that Visual C++ can do. You just need to consider that Visual C++ generates slightly better code than the MinGW build of the GCC compiler that Dev C++ uses. There are some problems when it comes to converting to .a linker libraries but the tools to do it with come with the MinGW compiler. The main reason not to use Visual C++ is that it may (did at one time) require a commercial licence to sell any software you built with VC++ while MinGW is free for any purpose.

on the other hand, one drawback to dev is issues it has with directx, anyone know if this has changed?