I made a post in my journal about my plans for 4E6 but I'm sure I'll need some help with this. First, I know the idea and story isnt fleshed out nearly enough right now but do you see problems with it? Have suggestions about where it should go? Etc. Given that I am primarily a C++ programmer, what libraries would you suggest for such a 2D sidescroller? I was looking at ClanLib but maybe there is something better? Are there sound libraries that people prefer? Is there other middleware you know of which you think would help me out? Finally, I might be open to working with others on this project as well.

Hi Colin,
This is my first posting at GD. Let me say hello to everyone. Hi!

I'm in the middle of a 4 week game programming challenge over at gameinstitute.com. I've been building a top-down shooter game. The contest expires in the middle of Oct. I participated in another contest a month ago. It was a 2D sidescroller.

I'm lucky finding this contest so early in the time interval...still 180+ days to go. I'm entertaining the notion... =)

So, I would recommend using DirectX and their 2D sprite stuff. There's several tutorials around the net. I prefer this to Win32 because its easy to rotate and scale sprites. In addition, transparency is as simple as specifying the color in the graphics format and playing with alpha. Win32 required masks...easy to do but time consuming.

For sound, this is my second project using FMOD from fmod.org. I wrote a wrapper to allow me to manipulate it specifically for my latest game.

Anyhow, if I get me wife's permission =) and I can come up with an original game idea involving a pony, accountant, crystals and explosions (I like them) then I might commit to this GD contest.

There's another contest beginning in mid-November at gameinstitute...so maybe I can use that challenge as a springboard to design and develop code for the 4e6.

Good luck on the contest.

Regards,
Chuck

if i were you i would give XNA and C# a try...
"The XNA Framework allows game developers to create modern games using the C# programming language and a rich set of development libraries. The XNA Framework provides its own content pipeline to make it easy to get rich content (3D, 2D, sound, etc.) from content creation sources into a game."

atr_23,

I agree XNA and C# are worth a try. Colin mentioned he was a C++ programmer. I know several coders who have made the leap to using C# and XNA framework...and they seem satisfied.

Regards,
Chuck