I've been creating online games for quite some time, but I've been using a program called GameMaker and some dlls to do it. In the past year I started programming my own dlls with c++ for GameMaker, so I know a little bit about online gaming. Anyways, I spent a couple years working on an online role playing game with GM, but recently I gave up because at the stage it was at, only about five players could play on a server (my computer which is kind of slow and only has broadband connection) without it lagging pretty bad. On top of that, the game wasn't all that complex; it had no 3d graphics, the world was rather small, and there wern't many different types of mobs and items. I want to expand on that and make a playable online role playing game. To do that, I'm going to need a different language. So my question is: what should I use? I don't really want to use c++ because I'm having a hard time learing directX, and directX is kind of necessary to a game that would be using 3d graphics. I thought about Java, but I don't know the first thing about Java. I can't really decide which route to take if I don't know anything about one of the paths. I don't want to use an engine either; that doesn't mean an engine is out of the question, though. However, I'm not considering something like c# an engine. I consider it to be more on the framerwork side. I want to have something that is going to be pretty smooth sailing. I know c++ would probably be my best option, but I'm far from a great c++ programmer so I'd rather use something else unless there is a really good reason to use c++. Please don't think I'm some newb that wants to create a MMORPG all by myself that will rake more dough than WOW and EQ combine. I just want to take what I've got and expand on it with a language that will actually let me do that. GM has put me into a corner and I can't really add much to my game until I figure out where to restart. Thank you for your time.

Maybe I was a little misleading when I said I wanted something pretty smooth. I'm really not looking for something like SDL or Allegro. I have already played around with SDL and Allegro, and from what people have told me, you can't make any serious game with SDL or Allegro because they don't take advantage of graphics cards and they are pretty slow.

I have been told that to do anything graphically advanced SDL and Allegro are not the answer. Wheater or not that is true, I don't know, but I would hope I havn't been lied to.

I checked the links you gave me, and I think pygame is out of the question. I think I might have been a little misleading and you thought that I really didn't have experiance programming games with a langauge like c++, when in fact I do. Pygame seems like a simplified c++/sdl combo, which is not what I want.

Tao.OpenGl and SDL.NET have caught my attention, though. It seems that either of these could be the answer that I'm looking for.

I went to the examples and tutorials links on the Tao website and it said there was nothing there. I then checked the Documentation and all that seems to do is just tell you what libraries are included. That really doesn't tell me much about what it does or how it works.

I don't think my first post was very specific for what I wanted I guess. I really just need something that is going to make graphics a little easier. I need to have the power of directX or openGL but an easier way to use them. I asked about Java because I thought Java had its own graphics library that was probably easier to use. But like I said before I don't know the first thing about Java. And I mentioned c# because I didn't know weather it would be better to use that or regular c++ for an online game. It seems that a lot of the newer MMORPGs are developed with c# rather then c++.

Hopefully now it's a little more clear what I want. I apologize for the confusion.

Thank you for your time.