I need help deciding which Graphics Libraries to use? i used to program c way, way back in the old days and have decided to pick it back up and write a modest 2d tile game. ive been studing the direcdraw articles here and wanted to use that but im using the devc++ compiler and the download for directx will take like 17 hrs so what does anyone recomend to be a good library. SDL, opengl or should i suck it up and download the directx stuff? i have several compilers one of which is microsoft visual c++ 6.0 this has directdraw stuff but i cant get programms to link properally. i also have the VC express 2005 compiler but it is bare bones and has virtually nothing as far as lib. i just need some advice on where to start and what stuff to start learning. any replies are appreciated.

If you want to take the advice of a novice game designer and programmer I´d say SDL. I just started to use it (when I joined these forums) and I´ve found it to be relatively easy to understand (for me) and also flexible enough (so your brain can work thinking about different solutions).

I´ve asked some questions about its performance and, to sum up, I´ve been told that if used properly its a powerful tool. As for OpenGl thing I´d stick to the ladder: climb one step at a time :).

There are lots of tutorials about SDL here:

http://lazyfoo.net/SDL_tutorials/index.php

I started learning SDL with them and though I use things a bit differently now I can´t really express how much value these tutorials hold!. Haven´t finished reading them though, one step at a time ;).

Hope that was useful.

I'd recommend SDL. It's a much smaller download, and it should be easier to learn. 3d (DirectX or OpenGL) allows for cool effects and hardware acceleration, but it's also much more complicated, and it'll be longer before you get something that works with it.