Gaming in C++

Here's the deal, /prog/. Over the winter break, I have decided I want to practice and expand my skills, and as such, design a small applet type game using C++. Now, i am fluent in C++, and MFC, but MFC wouldn't exactly be ideal for this. I fully intend for the game to be 2D Sprite based.

What should I look into, what should I use, and how should I go about things? I've heard openGL would work well, is there anything else I ought to remain cognizant of?

>>7

Practice, skill building.

>>5
And perhaps, but what else to build? I need something to push me forward, and if it would make a decent portfolio piece, all the better. And I will take a look at Boost, definitely. And well, as to what I wanna do? Just make an ordinary 2D sprite game, not sure what else to add to that. Just something easy that I can make look somewhat polished, and that I can do with the low experience I have.

Define flexible. I am admittedly rather nub, having only done a small handful of visual projects, and never getting my hands on as much code as I would like. But I would intend for this to require at least some work, ie: no scroller shooters, simple top down games and such. I'm likely going to make a platformer, and see how much depth I could add, and something easily expandable. The fact that I haven't really worked with Visual C++ outside of MFC is probably the strongest indicator of where I currently lie.

Hmm, would be interesting. Now I want to give that a shot, but I feel I could probably develop an algorithm that would get the job done. Coding that would not be hard, all the work would be in the algorithm that determines joints and simulates flexibility and such. I just need to dive into code and do something, really. Though I likely would tackle that later on.