Yeah, absolutely don''t give up! If you want to make games, you can and will, if you stick at it.

My advice would be to try and find a friend who''s interested as well, and learn together. That way, when one of you starts to feel fed up, the other can revitalize them.

And besides, there''s much more to making games than programming. A next-generation 3d engine isn''t much good without some great content to show off on it...

Superpig
- saving pigs from untimely fates
- sleeps in a ham-mock at www.thebinaryrefinery.cjb.net

I agree with the rest. If you are having trouble and finding it difficult to program game, I would suggest a bit of investment. Go out an buy 1/some books that would help you. I didnt have a clue about DirectX, so I bought "The Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Guru''s", in the first chapter he shows you how to make Breakout in Windows GDI, so you should be easially about grasp the rest of the ideas in the book. From reading a few chapters of the book, I wrote a clone of columns, and if your interested you can see it on my site, www.ciaranmccormack.tk
This game is totally unfinished, but it gave me the confidence and desire to move onto bigger and better things.

As the song says, "The race is long, and in the end its only with yourself!", so keep going at your own pace and enjoy it for the experiences you have.

Giant

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I''m not sure about the former." --Albert Einstein

Exactly, the key is finding a good initial foothold. Whether it''s a book that explains it from the beginning, or a toolkit with lots of good documentation (like Allegro etc).

Google is also great. Read documentation. If something doesn''t compile, find out why, don''t throw it in the bin.

It is hard work, this is why people get paid for it and do it for a career. Nobody makes a game overnight.

Helpful links:
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way | Google can help with your question | Search MSDN for help with standard C or Windows functions

If you are _really_ no good at programing, you could even try things like design, music, artwork, etc. Look on Help Wanted or the other respective forums. Perhaps you could ease into programing from there.

Anyway, keep at it, it''s alot of fun, and if you learn some of those other things, it can be realy great to know it all (design, art, music and programing)

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Yeah, I felt exactly like you a few years ago, I was in college, studying C++ Programming. And I looked at every tutorial on the net, and asked in forums such as this one, only it was GPmegasite back then... but I aimed too high, I wanted my first project to be a 3D game, yeah right =D
then I wanted to make a dungeon master style RPG, but I cant draw to save my life, and I didnt know anyone who could, so the project died.
I made some scrolling things, not any complete games though, and all I saw were these people making awesome scrollers, like Abuse, and cool 3D games, clones of Wolf 3D. but all I came up with looked like... crap.

So I gave up, haven''t touched a piece of code since... ubtil about a month ago, when I jsut felt like doing it. and now I''m working on a simple-ish 2D scroller. and thanks to the people on this forum, that have helped me a lot, it actually looks like I''m getting my first PC game together.

My point?
Keep at it, ask these guys here all your questions, make sure you know your language, and keep reading tutorials, and looking at what others are doing for ideas. but DON''T give up!

It''''s nice to be important, but it''''s more important to be nice.