NDraskovic

If you're a beginner, performance and portability should be a secondary concern: Create a game worth playing first.

This is exactly the reason I am trying to switch from XNA to another language. I think that for a beginner developer, smart phones are a good platform to get some experience, and get real users to test and evaluate your game. With that in mind, I think that XNA (or WinPhone's to be precise) has way too few users - Android and iOS are much more represented. I know that Android uses OpenGL (and Java, I think), it seemed as a good language to make the transition to (iOS and iPhone's are a bit too expensive). Can you please comment on this logic?

Seeing you come from XNA I think you will feel more at home with DX11. That being said there is no reason to switch away from VS for OpenGL development just switch to C++ or use OpenTK in which case you can even stick with C#.

I've thought about it, but if I want to create a game for non-desktop platforms, C++ is more applicable . Also, I think that C++ is somewhat of industrial standard when it comes to game development, so with that in mind, I think it is better to use C++ than C#

I can recommend 2 great web sites for XNA - http://www.riemers.net/ and http://rbwhitaker.wikidot.com/xna-tutorials. They both have very detailed tutorials that can get you started (and even a bit further).

This tutorial explains exactly what you need to do to extend the content pipeline to fit your needs, and you can run it on redistributable version.

When you create a new form, try going to th Form.Designer.cs and change the property of label into public, that way you should be able to interact with it from other forms. I think the same thing can be done for Form's text (caption) but I haven't tried it. I think what you are trying to do is to pass data between forms - this is the link that explains how to do that. Hope this helps.

I'd suggest starting with C# (to get the basic programming skills, HTML and PHP won't help you much in game development) - I really don't think that it is more complex than Java or C++ - in fact it has a lot of predefined tools that Java doesn't, and these tools will make your life much easier. Spend some time learning C# - I think that programming Windows forms are the best way to go because you can almost immediately see the effects of the code you write and is closest to actual games. When you get some practice, you will have to switch to a more game oriented framework - I'd suggest XNA, it was built on C# so the syntax is practically identical, and the transfer will be much easier. Games made in XNA can be distributed to PC, XBox and Winphones (and I think to Nokias, but don't take my word for it), but not to Android or iOs. As for GameMaker and similar tools, I think that they are way to limited - programming with XNA (or DirectX or OpenGL) will take much more of your time, but it will give you incomparably more options. Hope this helps, good luck

My "logical steps" were like this - I made a simple game (finding a path trough a "labyrinth"), then I tried to improve the movement and the control of the "agent", then I tried to improve the graphics, then I tried to make a more sophisticated labyrinth, and so on. My point is - think of a game (something not to restricted, but not to complicated either) then try to make a working version. Once you have it, think of ways to improve one or all aspects of your game and repeat this process until you think you learned enough to move to a new level of game complexity (then think of another, more complex, game and start the process all over again). This is a time consuming process - expect a lot of research trough forums/tutorials/code snippets, but you will have a strong sense of accomplishment each step of the way. I think that the idea of these forum(s) is not to lead you from a beginner to a professional, but rather to help you with details - you have a far greater chance of getting an answer if you ask about a specific problem (like "How do I... " questions) then asking about a whole game. Hope this helps, and don't get discouraged if (when ) you fail, just keep pushing on.