I guess I'll tell why I decided on C++
Prepare yourself for a story.
In my freshman high school year, I enrolled in computer club. Now at the time their leader ( the brother of a close friend) was teaching how to design simple HTML web pages. I saw something there that sparked my interest. I too wanted to use the computer to do my will rather than just read material and make basic documents. HTML was too difficult to learn at the time because I had no reference manuel just a poor teacher that knew his stuff but went too fast for me. I dropped the club after the first class.
I then found RPG Maker 2000 on the internet and waited 3 hours for the 2 megabyte file to download. I started some simple scripting but never got anywhere with it.
Some time later, I found Game Maker (forgive me) and started making some drag n drop button based games. I started leaning more and more towards actually coding in Mark Overmar's GML language. Soon I wouldn't touch the drag n drop end of Game Maker and wrote games mostly in code. I felt hollow and shameful when my games were not taken seriously so I set out to prove myself with a real programming language.
Now all the kiddies on Game Maker Forum were talking C++. So naturally I decided to give up Game Maker and learn C++. I purchased "Teach Yourself C++ in 24 Hours". About 7 chapters into it I fell flat on my face. I asked for "C++ for Dummies" for Christmas later that year. Feeling that that book was not geared towards game making I purchased "Teach Yourself Game Programming in 24 Hours". That book also used C++ but the author expected the reader to already know C++ focusing on just the game engine side. A few years later I found a book that focused on making games in C++ for the C++ beginner. This was "C++ for the Absolute Beginner". This was just set aside and I never really pushed myself to learn much of it. I then saw "Fundamentals of C++" on a bargain shelf. I looked through it, it appeared to be a book for students, and better yet they were using drawing commands towards the end of the book! Imagine that, this must be the secret drawing library of C++ than the other books left out! Guess what, it was full of antiquated code from a long expired library. Those little drawings shown in the book gradually faded into the cold heartless DOS box I'd seen so many times before.
Enter Blitzmax
Blitzmax was a wonderful tool. After a week of migraines I was making a simple Tempest game. I felt more like a man because I was able to cast off the chains of Game Maker. Also the programming model damage done by Game Maker was having to be reversed and it was quite painful. So I wrote about 4 or 5 games with Blitzmax.
Wanting to move from blitzmax I picked up "Build a Program Now" which discussed Visual Basic. I thought that this might be the language until I realized that it looked like the same nonsense that Game Maker was. I decided HELL NO after reading a chapter.
2009 - Now I have finished my associate's degree in college. I've enrolled in a university that has a serious computer department. I've just told the head of said department that I know a little about programming.
Ryan: "I do a little programming, I love making games."
Computer Department Head: "Oh, cool what language do you use?"
Ryan: "Well, I use Blitzmax, which is based on BASIC but adds some OOP principals and also a multimedia library."
Ryan: "I've also used a small bit of C++ but not for anything fancy."
Computer Department Head: "Well we teach Java and some C++ here as well as assembly."
Just last year I found a C++ book for $5 at Salvation Army. I just recently sat down and finished it. The last two chapters completely fell apart conceptually. However from the previous books I was able to understand all of what was going on and even learn some new things. I'm now restarting "C++ Programming for the Absolute Beginner" and really enjoying it this time. I know that making demos and true games is a bit far off but now I have a better idea of what programming is in any language. I'll learn something like Allegro or SDL next for my interactivity.
So there you have it, I have about 5 or 6 C++ books (about $250 worth) and an upcoming two years of hardcore programming. Why not get a jump on C++ to make those lessons easier? I'll still have to learn Java an assembly however. Also C++ seems to be a common language anymore for the game industry.
Probably more than anyone wanted to hear or know. This is what it has been like to try to make games in the middle of Montana without anyone to sit down and learn from. As you can probably see, I have tried and tried and tried C++ I have hundreds of dollars worth of C++ books. Now that I have a good hold on Blitzmax I think I'll make it in C++. It was just too hard to jump from Game Maker to C++. Game Maker is a full of bad ideas and notions about programming.
