Hey guys,

So I want to begin programming games, I've been using C/C++ for around a year and I think I'm fluent enough to give programming games a try.

Don't worry, I realise I'm likely to be starting off with pong ;) The part I need help with is how to get to that stage. I think I need a program to run alongside my compiler to actually have the window in which to run the game? How do I go from there to creating my own version of pong?

If anyone can give me advice or suggest books, tutorials, anything that would be amazing

ps. I'm on OSX, currently using Xcode

If you are confident enough in your C++ ability to have had made text-based games like Hangman or Blackjack, then you can start looking in to using APIs like SDL or SFML to help with the process of getting a window open that you can draw into. You could also use the native windowing APIs for OS X to load a window and create an OpenGL context, but SDL/SFML is likely to make this easier for you (since you will not need as much Objective-C bootstrap).

As Josh already states SFML is one option, which I highly recommend. It will get you into doing graphical games in no time and is a cinch. I actually just got back into C++ and first time doing it on a Mac. I found the tutorials for setting it up on XCode to be really easy.

Setting up on XCode: http://www.sfml-dev.org/tutorials/2.2/start-osx.php

After this they already have a pre-built template for you when starting a new project to create your first app which is helpful cause it does all the linker stuff for you and you are right into the learning aspect of it.

I highly recommend you to follow these tutorials: http://lazyfoo.net/tutorials/SDL/index.php . You will learn basic game programming concepts with SDL(You will be using it for windowing, events, sound and graphics) and maybe later on you can start to dig OpenGL and create more sophisticated rendering 2D or 3D.