Hey everyone! Thanks to the diligent replies of the members of this board, as well as the excellent books called "Windows Game Programming for Dummies", "Jamsa's C/C++/C# Programming Bible" and "Sam's Teach Yourself C++ in 21 Days", I have finally made my very first almost-almost-original (but not quite almost) game in windows functional. It's called... *drum roll * SPACE SHOOTERZ!
*note: It's functional, but not done! Please post some comments/suggestions, but no flames about the graphics... I'm not an artist.
Game.zip is both code/executable, code.zip is the code, and executable.zip is (surprise surprise!) the executable/bitmaps.
P.S. Please vote at the poll when you're done testing the game I wanna see what people think.