I am rekindling my interest in game development. I used to knock up little games on my Amiga in Amos and Blitz Basic, but never really got any of my 'projects' finished. It's now an aim to finish one of these, to a degree that I am satisfied with. There's no plan to make an MMO, or make money etc. Purely for my own development/enjoyment and that of others if they so desire.
Anyway, I'm going to gen up on programming with C# (figured it was probably the best to use, have coded basic stuff in C before, never liked Java). My question is do I need a 3rd party add on to help with all the 'game' related parts like graphics etc. I'm only interested in 2d stuff, have a few minor learning projects I want to get done. The usual stuff like pong, breakout, tetris etc. Medium/long term I'd like to do an rpg type adventure game, single player top down basic stuff, but a good framework to build on. SDL seems a good bet but a search on these forums and others suggest a mixed response to similar questions.....
Any advice much appreciated.