Benedict Verheyen wrote:
On a sidenote: java is not bad for such type of games too with the added advantage of being crossplatform. Also, a lot of games already exist with available source code. A while back i looked at game programming and studied it a bit. In java the basics that go for c++ game programming still are valid in java. For instance the need for double buffering, drawing in a memory screen dump before copying it to the screen to get faster updating and less flickering to name just one thing.
Java really is a poor choice for Debian as the implementations of Java by Sun and Ibm are proprietary and aren't included in Debian. Also byte-compiled code is quite slow. Compilling the code kind of defeats it's purpose as c++ would be better in that case. IMHO g++ is more mature than gjc (gnu java compiler). The crossplatform aspect pretty much disappears when you aren't able to use Sun's software. Also that's not so much of a problem when source code is available. Many free games have been ported back and forth fromlinux to windows (http://www.flightgear.org/) and even vice versa (zsnes, well it's not exactly a game...).
Bijan