Software

Slackware Linux. It's free. Format your hard drive and install it. Everything I used to get started programming a computer game, like SDL, SDL_mixer, SDL_image, and OpenGL and Gimp came packaged with it. Some other stuff on this page I had to download later but it's all free.

g++ is a compiler. Use it.

It's a programming language or something.

I use OpenGL to handle everything drawn to the screen.

SDL is awesome. It's super easy to use and it does everything. You could do an entire 2D Zelda-like game with only SDL, you don't need OpenGL. But to use OpenGL you do need something like SDL to work with it. I'm also using the SDL_mixer library and SDL_image library.

The Gimp is BADASS. It's like photoshop except it's free. Probably we'll use the Gimp to draw all the art.

GUICHAN is wicked. Use it.

MinGW. I use this on a Windows machine to create Windows versions of my demos.

PowerTAB is a really neat program for writing songs in windows. You can use it on Linux, too. Just follow my handy PowerTAB Linux tutorial.

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