Hey i am new to game programming and have received Visual Studio 2008 for free from my Academic Alliance through my college. I notice that it does not have a template for a Direct3D project. Is it even practical to be using this compiler (i really do like it a lot) or do you recommend another one like SharpDevelop? [Edited by - thepirateking on February 22, 2008 12:02:44 AM]

well thepirateking it really boils down to preference. if you dont mind your sdls doing for loops on transverse integers than yes I would stick with studio however to become a good game programmer you must realize and accept the fact that any library with the extensions .std, .sex, and .lag cannot store the bite ratio between a enumerate and a conjugated verb.

My first comment would be that hey, it's free, and that's good enough. My second comment is that hotmailhacker has waaaay too much free time on his hands.

VS 2008 is top of the line really. But a con to consider is that many other libraries won't support it yet. Depending on whether you need to use the source from other projects, this may or may not concern you. In this case using 2005 may be a better choice.

But again, it's an excellent IDE and compiler, and it dropped into your lap, free. Use it :)

edit- either 2005 or 2008 will be superior to sharpdevelop regardless, and using templates is a crutch :)

[Edited by - gharen2 on February 22, 2008 1:02:21 AM]