challenger3 posted on Feb 5 2006 at 12:05 PM said:
skills I need to learn in order to write my own basic games. Is learning C++ enough?
Do you already know how to program in general? There's a difference between learning a language, like C++, and knowing how to program. (speaking English:debating in English).
You'll need to learn how to work with the tools (compiler, linker, (and later probably make, and maybe automake)), which is pretty easy to get the basics of, but lots of people still stumble as they don't really understand what they're trying to learn, and try to figure out how to use the power-drill with screwdriver-bit before they know how a normal handheld screwdriver works, and what the difference is between a flat-bladed screwdriver and a phillips-head one.
You'll also need to know some basic unix shell commands to get your programs to run and play nice with the gp2x environment.
You might need to learn more about your own computer to be able to set up your development environment properly.
You'll need to learn about things like the GPL, and licenses in general, to avoid nasty surprises, like people lawfully demanding your sources that you'd not calculated on releasing (either not in their rough form, or not at all).
Most of the work is learning how to program though. I'm not sure C++ is best as a first language... but this differs from person to person and depends on what you already know. For some people Assembly is a natural first language (really basic, close to the hardware), for some people something high-level like basic is a better start. Usually C/Pascal is a second language, either allowing some more abstraction and convenience (coming from asm) or more freedom,speed,useful datastructures (coming from basic). C++/Delphi etc. are object oriented languages, based on existing languages; although you can learn them from scratch, usually people learn them after knowing the language they're based on.
P.