I am a college student currently studying computer science, and I have an interest in going into game development. Of course I am a long way away from breaking into the industry no doubt, but I am here to ask what kinds of things I should be working on to help me with this ultimate goal. So far I have taken intro to C++, and am currently taking Object Oriented Programming (and have read quite far ahead in the book), but everything I have done has been console based programs, and few of them have been games (other than saying a short guessing game). Most have been either the typical learning programs or short simulations. I have a decent knowledge of the c++ language itself at this point, but before I go on to other languages I'd like to at least begin to master what I've started. I've just recently started trying some basic programs with winapi, since I would really like to get started on some programs with actual graphical interfaces, as I have no experience with this. My questions are, what kind of things should I work on next? Are there any other api's I should become comfortable with? Are there any good tutorials online, or books off amazon that can help me in this goal? I'd eventually like to be able to code a 3D game (given enough time of course). Obviously jumping right into 3d programming would probably be a bit advanced for me right now, but what kinds of things should I learn along the way to this? Any help or tips anyone can give would be greatly appreciated <3 Edit: Any kind of programs I should try working on as practice for new reccomended learning things would be fantastic as well.

I'm starting out as well. In between college and work I've been playing with XNA (check creators.xna.com), its really easy for 2D games although you can still do 3D. Xna is in C# and very similar to Java (should be no problem learning it coming from c++). You'll find links from that site to everything you'll need to get XNA up and running, it's completely free. If you want to stay with c++, you can use the DirectX or OpenGL api. From personal experience DirectX can be a little confusing to setup (in C++, especially since I'm not use to it), so if you find it confusing, XNA may be a jumpstart into it. As for OpenGL, I can't say much about except I didn't know where to begin lol.

As a note for 3D:
3D opens a whole new door to physics, models/meshes, etc. So just be prepared.

A really simple game to make is Pong, there are plently tutorials, atleast for XNA (I'm sure there are some for DirectX w/C++)