I am going through Visual C++ in 21 Days and would like to program a game, but I do not really see how I could implement the things I''ve learned in an actual program. Does anyone have any ideas as to what I should program now? So far, I''ve done a calculator, a program to calculate averages, and a program to calculate determinants (all console applications). I''ve reached a mental block... any ideas?

My suggestion is that you keep on coding C++ until you´ve got a firm grip on it. Then you probably would want to read one of the "Get started" tutorials on this site. Implementing what you know into a game may not be to clear right now but when you´ve chosen a platform to work with tutorials and books will show you how. Just focus on knowing your way around C++ first.

sHaKaZeD

A simple blackjack or battleship game using text output is a good idea as a first game. Then to move on to graphics, you can do a number of things. I learned allegro/djgpp graphics (djgpp is a free compiler for c/c++ and allegro is a game programming package you can download for it). Another good idea is to use java since it is so similar to c++ and has an easy to program gui system set up. Using these, you could make, say a tetris-type game, card game, or even a side scroller like mario.

Well you could do what I did. Like the other suggests make a textmode battleship game using arrays, it''ll teach you how hard it can be to get your program running without bugs and doing exactly what you want and learn from all your mistakes and get comfortable with the IDE your using. Then once you''re fairly comfortable with functions,pointers,arrays etc. go on to windows programming and learn the basics enough to understand what your''re doing and then goto the OpenGl section of gamedev and read NeHe''s tutorials and then you''ll be doing the really fun stuff.

Oh yeah I forgot to add I made a tetris clone using the windows GDI and that forced me to understand windows programming.