Developing for Vista

Yes, you can develop in OpenGL with Vista. No, you don't need to use .net framework if you don't want to.

The .net framework is definitely rich enough for game development, but it doesn't have a game-specific class library out of the box (as in the default configuration). It is possible to use OpenGL with .net if you have a .net wrapper library for it (and I seem to recall some being available).

Visual Studio 2005 runs just fine under Vista, after you apply the VS 05 Service Pack 1 for Vista and run the IDE with administrative priviledges. If you don't want to turn the user account control off for this, there's a checkbox in the executable compatibility properties tab to enable admin rights for that particular application. There are some compatibility issues still, but they will not affect ordinary c++ programming.

Thanks! With regards to developing using OpenGL, would I still be using Win32 to get my window on the screen, or is there a more modern way of doing that for Vista?

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Original post by guyver23 Thanks! With regards to developing using OpenGL, would I still be using Win32 to get my window on the screen, or is there a more modern way of doing that for Vista?

There are some more advanced techniques you can use, but they would probably be excessive for just an ordinary window. Using Win32 also has the advantage of working on XP (and older) OS, so it's a perfectly viable option.

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Original post by guyver23 Thanks! With regards to developing using OpenGL, would I still be using Win32 to get my window on the screen, or is there a more modern way of doing that for Vista?

Forget about it and use SDL or GLUT to set up your window.

If you are planning on writing .net games you won't have to worry if your users have the .net framework installed since it comes with Vista now unlike XP!

If you're willing to try something new, I've been hearing some good things about XNA. You could even develop games for the XBox 360 with it.

Thanks for all of the replies!

I was considering something like XNA, but I would at the very least like to create my own 2D engine the first time around.