I highly recommend this book too! I study my masters in Game Design & Production and thats been one of the few worthwhile reads.

For example Hotline Miami which is one of the top rated indie games this year was made with Game Maker. They've made pretty good amount of money with it too I think, so I think its "real", as in fun, well rated game experience and as a bonus its been profitable for the creators.

http://www.cppgameprogramming.com/
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/centrum-xna.aspx
http://www.amazon.com/Hamlet-Holodeck-F … 0262631873

... and so on.

Guy, as a struggling game programmer, I can assure you this: that's not an easy road to travel. One piece of advice is to focus on some easy learning "real language" instead of going directly to C++. For my first game (which is a turn-based board-based card game that is still in development, even having a 5 programmers team), I'm using C# (which is what I use at work) with a framework called WPF, which wont do for a sidescroller. XNA would be a good choice I guess, and the sample project is a sidescroller already! Also ... tons of books (XNA related, game programming related, C# related in this case) would help you along this bumpy road that is game development.

And there's also something called game design ... maybe this can be more your area (since it doesn't require programming skills), which is a area for people who create game logics, feelings and so on (Game Design through lenses is a good book on that, and also Hamlet on the Holodeck can give you a lot of good insights). The problem with this way is that you'll have to find the artists and the programmers and convince them that your project is worth doing, so there's a lot of communication skills involved.

At last, no game is easy to make, even if you're already a programming wizard. Only effort, study and practice can make it easier.

Here's a good link for a blog from one of the Tony Hawk's frachise developers: http://cowboyprogramming.com/

....thanks

Oh my goodness. This thread.

Bitwish - if I were you I would concentrate my efforts mostly into my music. Dabble with programming simple stuff, like a calculator or a stopwatch. Go here to learn more if you wish www.learncpp.com, poke around, see if this is what you are okay with. If it isn't your speed, Gamemaker by YoYo Games is a decent environment for simpler games. Best of luck.

this is what im useing as my bible http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/author/a … action=add

I guess he meant like C+ and that stuff.

God damit, forgot to mention that, sidescroll, pc, english.

kKay, i guess you could go with the Easy-to-use Stuff, like http://www.thegamecreators.com/ , http://www.rpgmakerweb.com/ or http://www.yoyogames.com/gamemaker/studio

These are Okay if you don't want to get into real deplovemnt (Whatever somebody consider as real). From these i only used the RPG Maker (and also only the 2003 Version) like 4 years ago. If you read some tutorials and practice some times you can actually can make great games with nice features. Just be sure to use other sets (Chip-, Face-, Tilt- and so on) then the built in they give you.
I don't know how complexe the new RPG Makers are, but you can make a game real quick (that sucks) or if, like i said, learn the commands and how to use them can make a really good one.

What platform? What type of game? Do you know a programming language? These are important things to put in the original post.

Great qestion, casual, free and fun, sorta like lundum dare stuff

Depends on your own ideas of how the game should turn out. High-Quality or Casual Stuff? Do you want to make some money of it or just for the fun of making one?

So ive been working on writing this game for over a year now, and its awesome, but the catch is, i dont know how to make one, so i was just wondering what resources and developing programs that i can use.