>>4
That is sort of what I am trying to do, I'm building a shmup development toolkit. I suppose SDL/Allegro will end up handling graphics (and input?) but I will also be poking around with efficient collision detection algorithms and scripting (maybe bulletML).

Thanks for the info guys, I'm checking out Allegro and SDL now.

While we're on the subject of game development, has anybody ever done it with Eclipse/CDT/MinGW? I know I was having troubles getting directX to work with it ...