When you post you tend to build a reputation for yourself about who and what you are. I want rodneyldixon to succeed at programming just as much as the next person who tries to take it up. Unfortunately though rodneyldixon has dug his own hole which nobody can get him out of but himself.

I have faith in ya rodneyldixon that you''ll get things figured out and not just programming. I''m just not expecting it overnight.

YAP-YFIO
-deadlinegrunt

I think something a lot of people may not realise that Rodney is 13. Do the math people 13 - 5 = approx grade 8. I don''t know what exactly the school curiculum is where he lives, but they didn''t even try to teach us algebra until we were in grade 9. And I don''t think anyone can disagree that algebra is an important prerequisite to programming.

Rodney, my suggestion to you is that, since you''re itching to get down to business, you start off with a design doc of some sort. Pick a game (Go Fish was the one I started with, moving things in real tme can be tricky to start). Write down all the rules. Write down what the user is expected to do. Write down what happens once he''s done it. Plan out the user interface and all the display elements. When it comes to sound, I suggest you stay away until you''re comfortable with everything else.

The design doc is supposed to be the first step anyways. If you have everything written down and you look at it and the code still doesn''t come to you, then you can ask better questions. You have to sort of break everything down into the smaller steps which actually are in the "Teach Yourelf C++ in 21 days" book you got. And when you realise that it doesn''t explain the finer points of sprite implimentation, you improvise using what it does explain. Some of the higher level visual basic stuff might be the place to start.

My first games used BASIC (before it was visual). They pretty much told the user to make a choice, the user typed it in (no error checking), and then something happened. It wasn''t much but it was either that or learn assembly language. Being 13 at the time I knew that wasn''t going to happen so I made the best of what I had. When I finally understood something new I tried to add it to something I''ve done before. This is the sort of thing you got to do.

It occures to me that maybe you know some basics, but perhaps you don''t know how to put them together to make a game. If that''s the case... if that is truly the case, tell us the things you understand and what you''re trying to accomplish. Odds are it''ll involve learning new skills that might be too much for you (trig), but perhaps someone can help you to realise it using the skills you already have.