I''m new to gameprogramming and I''m going to buy my first book (I have read books on C++ before, but not gameprogramming). Is openGL good? I''ve heard that you can make games for both Linux and Windows with openGL. If I make a game for Windows, how much do I have to change if I want to make the same game for Linux? do I have to start it all over again?

OpenGL is a great graphics API, but that doesn''t mean it handles everything. You won''t need to change any OpenGL code to port your application, but you probably will need to change the Win32 API and WGL code. I''d suggest using something like SDL along with OpenGL to get around the Win32 API and WGL, then you won''t need to change ANY code (unless you do something platform specific on purpose) to port the game. SDL handles input, threading, audio, time, and window management.

Learning OpenGL isn''t going to be easy (not that it is really hard) though. See Nehe''s for some tutorials. Most of them have a download (at the bottom of the page) that shows you how to do that tutorial using SDL.

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