OpenGL sounds a better choice to me. Portable, widely supported, easy(ish) interface. Only graphics though I suppose...

Frank

If you have the time, DirectX and whatever platform-specific APIs do the job.

Allegro uses DirectX under windows.

Funny thing you posted this thread! I was just thinking about Allegro late last night before I went to bed!

Anyway, I''m an old Allegro user. I used it about 4 years ago, when it started getting big. Honestly, I loved it. Alegro is a GREAT way to start your game programming days. It''ll help you see concepts within game programming easily and clearly, and the learning curve for beginners is great. I am speaking from experience. Allegro helped me made some pretty nifty games, including a street fighter vs fatal fury vs Mortal Kombat game. I did it in one summer, with all the bells and whistles (no doubt, i''d probably leave a link for download, but the source/game was lost in a great disaster (accidental format )

Allegro was orignally a DOS library for DJGPP (well for the DOS port at least). It worked incredibly, and some guys later made a Windows wrapper through DirectX, called WinAllegro (remember that anybody?) Now the windows port is completly integrated in the whole Allegro package, and thumbs up to that.

However, one of Allegro''s drawbacks is the absence of network/multiplayer functionality. This is partially due to fact that Shawn (original author of Allegro) wants to keep Allegro portable, and to add that functionality will inherintly cause it to be platform specific. So if you plan to do a multiplayer title in the near future, Allegro is not the way to go. Hopefully Shawn sometime will agree and put it in, even though it might take some work.

If you just want to make a non-network title and to get your feet wet, then Allegro is definitely the way to go. It''s easy, simple, runs great, and most of all, it''s completely free. Take it from me, I''ve learned quite alot from it. However later on you might want to look into DirectX, not because it''s easy (I hated DirectX when I first learned it, in fact, in many ways I still do hate it to death) but because it''s the only way to make games these days. Microcough has definitely taken over the standard of making games and multimedia applications on the winblows platform (which almost every human being alive is running right now)

So take my advice, go do Allegro, come back to us with a great game, and when you''re ready, move and transfer your newly learned skills into DirectX. If you need a little leg up in getting started, just email me at khoifish@yahoo.com i''ll happily help you out jakovo