Hello, fellow game-geeks!
SidebarGeek: That sounds like fun...what sort of hacks do you do on ROMs?
jolger: You're already off to a really good start by learning Delphi.
The way I and lots of other people learnt to write games is this: Set yourself a goal of writing a really simple space-invaders clone.
Think about all the tasks this involves - getting input from the keyboard, drawing the bullets and player and alien ships, keeping track of everything, detecting when a bullet hits something, keeping score, knowing when the game has ended, and so on. Then you figure out how to do each task. Start off with learning to draw a single object on the screen. Then figure out how to make it move. Then make it controllable with the keyboard. Then add another object that moves around on its own, and so on.
The most important thing is not making the best game in the world, and not adding a million features, but actually finishing it so it's proper playable game. Don't worry about how good it is. The next game will be better, the one after that even better, and before you know it you'll be John Carmack
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Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
-- Samuel Beckett