i am by no means new to programming, last year i spent quite a few months messing with carmack's code in quake2 in C and C++
i have also developed for XNA in C# in the past, and have developed homebrew demos for handheld consoles,

my first programming language was turbopascal around 1997-1998. but programming is not all that i do. (i can do rendering, modeling, drawing, illustrating, spriting, etc, etc.)

i think i have the skills needed to make a small game start to finish now (minus the sound, maybe).

it will be a 2d game (side view) will support multiplayer and pvp. should be cheat protected! and i plan to put it up on steam as an indie title, or maybe as a store game on consoles too if at all possible; but steam is my aim for now with the others coming hopefully a bit later

doing a bit of research on this i have given myself a headache, i just don't know what api is the correct one to make a 2d indie game for sale on steam that will allow me to secure the netcode and not limit what i'm tryin to do.

i am currently looking at unity, but it seems way to gimmicky and requires training much like an adobe suite application, you have to know where the buttons are, dealing with stuff they want you to deal with like layers (instead of setting different Z values) it just seems like more trouble than it's worth for me right now.

on the plus sides, it seems it does save a little bit of time and the result is multi platform, is it really worth it?

what sort of API would you suggest? i don't really want to deal with low level stuff like pixels and that kinda stuff, i'm not trying to reinvent the wheel. i'd hopefully use a library to handle the basics like drawing sprites and so forth, but i need a powerful and flexible platform so i don't have to worry about arbitrary limitations like limits on the sprite size (tryin to go HD) or a flawed and easily hackable netcode (though i still want some of the heavy lifting done in this area because i am a novice in programming multiplayer and securing data from clients onto servers)

what would you guys recommend? help an independent developer out so i can begin knowing i haven't made a big mistake!!

if you're going to recommend a library, should i go opengl? i hear it's better than directx but i don't know if those will help me deal with the sprites, sounds... that's the kind of stuff i want a XNA type platform to work with (obviously not XNA because it's not current and not to be sold on steam)

i want a library to hold my hand and handle stuff like dealing with in-game windows, drawing the stuff, scaling.
but unity is too much hand holding for me!!!! i think i'd like to be more free in my approach and work directly with code

i thank you for your time beforehand !

Monogame ,Haxe or AS3.

HyperV

hey there HyperV!
thanks for the suggestions, i went through the feature list of monogame and haxe.
haxe seems like a language that can output applications for mobiles and browser as well as windows. and the api seems rather crude, no window handling no scaling..

monogame seems quite promising, at least for windows and xbox360; but i really want to look to the future and develop for xboxone, playstation 4 (not yet supported), windows and the steam console that is coming up; i really don't want or need to develop for mobile platforms or browsers at all;

actionscript 3 is just... i'd rather go with unity lol. i don't think flash is that much different

just those solutions seem more mobile based and web based than what i want to do; my game idea wouldn't do well without real controls; touch screen isn't going to cut it for the gameplay i'm looking for at all

i was looking at SDL and SFML; maybe these would be a good idea? would these allow me to port my game over to PS4 or XBone easily? should i try and program for directX or openGL???

I recommend SFML, except if you need ports for consoles. SFML works fine on all major PC platforms, is fast and written using modern C++. I have to tell you that there aren't that many good engines, frameworks or libraries that support all major PC platforms plus the consoles. As you seem to like relatively low-level code I recommend using a library like SFML or SDL as you said.

Do you know C++? If yes then try Oxygine framework.

In the basis of the engine there is a scene graph, that is similar to Flash one. To be short, You can call this as Flash for C++, but more comfortable and way faster. Initially it was developed for mobile platforms (iOS, Android), but can be also used for PC games.

Maybe you can try Love2D, Is written in Lua with C++, works good on all major PC platforms, Besides have support for Android, have unofficial Port in iOS, nLOVE port replacing OpenGL and OpenAL with SDL, Even are working a port for PS Vita if you are interesting. For web port there one called Loveliness but is incomplete and Work in Progress.

alright guys thanks for all the help i think i came to a conclussion, which may or may not help others on their choice but this is what i am going for;

so after considering many of your suggestions seriously, i game SFML a try.
it's not bad! i was kinda liking it - then, i decided to see what others had done with SFML... what a dissapointment! all games are amateurish at best! then checking out SDL they have valve backing them which is great! and you have portability to mobile and mac/linux.

so really SDL is the more sensible choice, but it doesn't do as much out of the box.
so if you're going to go through all the hassle then why not just use opengl by itself? so i researched that end and came up with http://www.glfw.org/

which just came out some months ago; i gave it a good look; it seems like a very good very low level library for handling the basic stuff;

after deciding wether to go low level with GLFW or just let the library do the gruntwork i realized that if valve had been putting their faith in sdl so they can get indie games on steam then there's really nothing wrong about relying on the API for a bit.

after i decided that, the choice was easy; i gave monogame a last consideration and picked monogame as the api of choice.

if i wanted to reinvent the wheel i would certainly go with GLFW, and dont get me wrong it's tempting for a perfectionist like me;
but monogame now has ps4 support so that's what turned the tables and gave me a final desicion -

monogame it is.

i have to say sorry to hyperV - he was right all along

here is how they stack by category and how i came up with the solution

the three i considered at the end:

SDL monogame GLFW

flexibiblity 4**** 3*** 5*****
portability 3*** 5***** 4****
features 3*** 5***** 2**
accesibility 3*** 4**** 2**
speed 4**** 4**** 5*****


flexibility is how far you can push them beyond their intended usage - since monogame is XNA it is a bit restricted and comes up the loser with 3 starts

portability is how many systems i can port the app to, instantly- monogame the clear winner.
features is how much heavy lifting the program does, xna is a very useful library so i give it the edge here. GLFW is VERY bare bones.
accessibility is user friendliness. again the edge to monogame.
speed is how much the library gets in the way of your programming, how cumbersome the library is. edge goes to GLFW though not by a lot.