I've been working for a while in a game development system called "Game Maker", which involves some level of actual code, but involves a lot which is built in. However, since I want to continue and improve at creating games (even if just as a hobby), I've been thinking of getting into something more "professional" (though I'm not sure if that'd be the best word for it). I don't have much experience at all in most programming languages. I've used Visual Basic for about two years, and am probably going to take a class on Java next year, so while I'm nowhere near professional, I'm not completely new to the concept of programming. So, what would be a good next step in game development from a program like Game Maker? The thing to keep in mind is that so far, this is just a hobby, so I'm doing it solo, meaning that I'm willing to invest time into learning something new, but if it's something that would realistically require a team to get any satisfactory results, it probably wouldn't be for me, or at least not yet. Thanks.

Thanks. Honestly, I've been using Visual Basic mostly for applications and such, but I didn't really think to use it for game programming. I'll take a look at Python, too.

If your looking for doing it for a hobby I think C# might be good for you, check out the XNA framework(DirectX).