Comment Speaking from experience (Score 1) 142
Start with something small, like a puzzle game. They aren't sexy, but they are doable in your time frame. The game mechanics for things like tetris or minesweeper are pretty easy to understand, which will allow you to spend more time focusing on other things like the basic inner-workings of a game, how do sound engines work, how to best utilize graphics libraries, etc. Plus with puzzle games your need for hitting 100 frames per second is reduced.
The biggest mistake I have seen people make is they want to build a FPS or a RTS as their first game and they get so bogged down in artwork, tweaking frame rates, AI, etc. that they finally just give up. I almost fell to the same mistake. I thought "turn based strategy game, how hard could that be." It took two years of late night work to get PocketWar to the point it's at today, and many times I wish I had started with something simpler.
Almost all games are written in C++ so if you are looking for experience to apply toward the future break down and learn it. As most the post above say, SDL is also a wonderful thing. There are tons of samples on the net that you can use as references.
The biggest mistake I have seen people make is they want to build a FPS or a RTS as their first game and they get so bogged down in artwork, tweaking frame rates, AI, etc. that they finally just give up. I almost fell to the same mistake. I thought "turn based strategy game, how hard could that be." It took two years of late night work to get PocketWar to the point it's at today, and many times I wish I had started with something simpler.
Almost all games are written in C++ so if you are looking for experience to apply toward the future break down and learn it. As most the post above say, SDL is also a wonderful thing. There are tons of samples on the net that you can use as references.
