Ok, So I know C, And A tad of C++, And I would like to dive into game programming. When I research it and look around, I get frightened because thier are so many API's, And I was wondering Which one to use? Now I Like OpenGL, but that's not really an All in one suite, more of just the Graphics, so i'd also have to learn OpenAL and Others. Or I could take the MS way and learn DirectX, But from what I hear from most people, it's not a good place to be. Their are also others who recommend SDL, Visual Basic, And .NET/C#, so my question is which one?

I know everybody says you should learn OpenGL because it works on all platforms, but honestly the coding method's are not the same for each platform. To code OpenGL in linux and in windows, you need to know almost 2 different declarations for everything, so my question is if you are going to learn a graphics library, why not just learn OpenGL if you are going to linux only, or DirectX for windows only?

Ok, So I have the problem that I want to listen to music I bought on iTunes In Windows Media Player. The .m4a Encoding is not seen be Wmplayer, And all attempts to convert them using known programs(Hymn) have failed. But I have found the one solution, burn them to CD, to which they will be converted to .cda, then convert(rip) to .mp3, the only problem with this is the wasting of CD's. So, My Question, Is thier emulation software out their that can fake the burning of the .m4a to .cda, then autostream that to .mp3?

Ok, So the basic Question I have is simple, OpenGL or DirectX? I Want to begin graphical game programming, and i've learned their is OpenGL, which would include OpenAL(OpenSL) and other Sets to make the whole game, while DirectX is almost self-contained. Now, let's face it, if it's game development, it's got to be Microsoft, so I know i'm going to be programming it for windows. I am going to do it all in C/C++ and i've gotten many people in a passionate debate over open vs closed standards. So I have a real question to all the game programmers out thier... For Windows Game Programming, which is A)Easier, B)Faster, C)Neater, OpenGL or DirectX?