Hello, I am sort of new to this game development thing but I am open to new ideas. My main question is , If I wanted to create a 2d game. What Programs Software Apps Do I need to have a decent running game. Thank you

your question is very generic, and i'll assume you have no background in programming.

1: Pick a language to start off with, one that you'll probably stick with for atleast a good year. Java and Action-Script, from what I've heard seem to be the easiest to get up ad going. C# is a medium selection, C++ being one of the more difficult languages to start off with, though is my prefered.

2: Then get a decent IDE/Compiler for the language. This is all highly dependent on the language you choose. Microsoft makes plenty of free Express versions for most languages.

3: depending on the language you pick (some come with there own built in graphics abilities) you'll need to pick a graphics api. This is what you'll be using to draw graphics to the screen. the most common ones are DirectX and OpenGL. sub api's that focus on just 2D but aren't technically as fast as the above, are SDL (derived from OpenGL) and Allegro. those are mostly C and/or VB based api's though.

4: start from the bottom and learn the basic, and keep coding and coding and coding. don't get too caught up in buying books, the best way to learn is to code and code and code... and code.

hope that helped

Have a gander at Python and the pygame module. They are generally considered to be beginner-friendly from what I've heard and are quick to install and have up-and-running. There are also many excellent tutorials for Python (both in its documentation and elsewhere), and I assume the same is true for pygame. C++ is often daunting for the beginner or at least was in my experience.

Quote:Original post by speedie
SDL (derived from OpenGL)

Note that SDL on Windows uses DirectX, I believe.