I've been looking at OpenGL for graphics for a 2d game I would like to make - But god it's hard.

Now the game I intend on making is a 2d side scrolling game which will have upto 50 sprites moving around at once. Will quartz handle this to a useable level, I don't care if the frame rates arn't huge just as long as the animations look smooth.

Do I need OpenGL? Or will Quartz do the trick?

Thanks

Quartz is harder than OpenGL

It should handle those requirements OK, though, I'd think.

Quartz can certainly handle that, but if the user doesn't have Quartz Extreme or a really fast computer it'll be unplayably slow. Especially since it's a scrolling game. OpenGL on the other hand can handle this no sweat.

Do you have a reason to use Quartz over OpenGL? OGL really is pretty easy to learn, at least compared to Quartz or Quickdraw.

Quartz won't handle that well on low end systems. (like my 450Mhz G3 Rage128) I'll be getting like 10fps if you do it in quartz.

use opengl.

I probably won't have CocoaBlitz documentation done untill udg2k3 starts. (course that's a big must for me)

Don't bother with Quartz for games, it's too slow ( QE doesn't do anything except composite windows, so don't look for speed from there )

Use QuickDraw, SpriteWorld, or CocoaBlitz if you don't want to learn OpenGL. SpriteWorld is a lot bigger and more mature than CB, but it's really geared towards Carbon usage, so getting it working with Cocoa could take some effort, and it has C / C++ APIs rather than Obj-C.

If it's sidescrolling, you'll have to replace every pixel in the window. The more pixels you replace, the bigger OpenGL's advantage. I am working on a game that moves two large sprites and a couple of smaller ones, but not the background, and Quartz is delivering 25 fps on a 500MHz G3 running 10.1.5.

<shameless plug>
You may also want to have a look at Allegro; under OSX it uses QuickDraw if in windowed mode, or directly draws to the screen if in fullscreen mode. If you don't want to learn QD or OpenGL, have a look at it; it has a really easy to use API...
</shameless plug>

Whatever API you choose, keep in mind that it all depends on what kind of game you're making; a sidescroller updates the whole screen every frame, so maybe OpenGL is better since it gives you hardware acceleration for free. But any 2d API will work great too if your code is smart enough.