No game building knowledge whatsoever

No, I don't know that much about C++ yet, but I'm learning. That's all I really know, along with some foundational Adobe CS5 skills (Illustrator, Flash, etc.).

I'd like to make a small game for now, NOT something cheesy (that runs in command prompt and has you guess a random number like I've made to date). Something with graphics and pretty colors and pictures and sound!

So where do I even begin? I have no idea where to start or what to do. Of course I Googled it and found some juicy info but I'm sure you fine people could provide better insight and personal experience.

I'm thinking something like a shooter/sniping game. No user-controller characters or anything, but maybe a mouse-controlled reticle at a fixed target at various distances, so you have to try to aim a certain height above the target to accomodate for drop. Adding wind to complicate things could come in later, but I'd like to start simple and build on it.

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Originally Posted by muffinman8641

I'd like to make a small game for now, NOT something cheesy (that runs in command prompt and has you guess a random number like I've made to date).

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You've got to walk before you can run. If you don't have the programming fundementals, it's not going to happen.

I suppose so. I'm just curious what it would take for something like this.

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I'm just curious what it would take for something like this.

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First it requires learning the language.

What I've seen suggested a lot is to start with making clones for classic games like Pong, Tetris and Pacman. Then move up to something more complex like a sidescroller (Mario, Metal Slug, etc.). I believe that these are good suggestions. :)

I would also urge you to take a look at SDL collection of libraries if you're going to program in C++. They are widely used and there are some good tutorials on the topic of game programming using it (e.g. LazyFoo's)

I'm new at programming as well but a suggestion is to write an othello/reversi game. Either direct into windows or as I did. In console first and then in Windows using circles as counters. It will help you practice condition statements and array usage.

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Originally Posted by msh

What I've seen suggested a lot is to start with making clones for classic games like Pong, Tetris and Pacman. Then move up to something more complex like a sidescroller (Mario, Metal Slug, etc.). I believe that these are good suggestions. :)

I would also urge you to take a look at SDL collection of libraries if you're going to program in C++. They are widely used and there are some good tutorials on the topic of game programming using it (e.g. LazyFoo's)

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Great resource, but when I try to download SDL headers and binaries from the step one tutorial, it's just a .tar.gz file. I have no idea what to do with this (it says open it, but I don't have software for that).

You can use 7zip to extract targz's.

However, if you want to do c++ and not c, I would suggest looking at sfml instead of SDL.

But first, I would really suggest (again) that you get your basics down before trying to do too much fancy crap.

If anyone has any links as great as the one msh provided for SFML libraries please share.

Is there any way I could make a simple game and if a friend and I both had the .exe file and each other's IP addresses we could play against each other?

Like a basic multiplayer game. Something super simple like Tic Tac Toe

Yes you could muffinman. Once again you will need to get an understanding of some basic concepts, such as Sockets, TCP/IP, client-server, and peer-to-peer models.

A really good project to make as a beginning programmer is Jeopardy. It's really good for programmers just starting out because It doesn't require moving sprites. So I'd definitely recommend it.