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I'd like to hear more about what i should really DELVE into..... what subject matter is important to me to learn to be a great (game) programmer.
That depends on the game you're making. For example, if you're making a game that involves realistic computer-controlled enemies, you'll need quite a bit of AI. If you're planning a online head-to-head deathmatch game, AI is completely irrelevant unless you want to make bots for your game. At this point, I don't think "a lot of vector and matrix math, maybe learn some pathfinding algorithms" is going to help you much (;)) but you might want to figure out how you're going to display ASCII graphics, maybe even write an ASCII-Gfx library or something in preparation for your game.