I am sure this has been covered numerous times before but I haven't been able to come up with an answer.

Ok I am ready to write my first game but I am a little unsure where to begin. I have not done any graphics programming for years the last time I did any was about 5-6 years ago using the allegro library and a little bit of Direct x.

My questions is what to use for graphics do I use Direct X and roll my own 2 d graphics library. Are there some standard practices? I have read that Directx is the way to go but I know very little about it at this point.

Any help or comments would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks

I would pick allegro over directX anyday, the recent releases have been really great. Full support for Win98+,NT,XP, Linux and recently MAC.

Allegro's interfaces are much simpler then direct draw and it has a lot of features that directDraw doesnt. If you go with DirectDraw then you need to write your own clipping routines, your own window managment, your own alpha transparences etc. Also the interfaces in DX5-DX7 (Which is what you'll want to use) are tricky to use, you have to be pretty familiar with com to really get it running.

We use allegro for Katsu's Journey and it's been great to work with.

who is heading up the development of that. I thought I read that shawn quite writing that so I thought it had died a few years back. I will do some research. Thanks for the input.

Ok I found the answers to those questions. Wow that project is really alive that brought me back. I am a little fearful about writing in allegro 4 and there being no more backward compatiblity - maybe that is not an issue though.

I suggest also looking at SDL (http://libsdl.org) which is very similar to Allegro in concept. Just a matter of taste I guess, but SDL seems to be more portable overall. And I haven't used Allegro personally so I can't say which is better.

The more I am learning it looks like one of these two paths will be the way to go. If I wan't to get the game done in a reasonable amount of time. My reasons for the first game are just to learn, I am giving myself about a two year time frame to get it finished. I will be working on this project less than part time with my full time job, then part time programming projects I have already started.
I purchased the torque engine about a year ago because I wanted to do a 3D game my first go but after reading this board for awhile I have decided against it.

Thanks for the info-