Ben2theedge, that's good advice that even I have problems to adhere to for my hobby project. Gotta focus a bit more.
Yeah, it's true that gamemaker is even easier, for impatient people. Dragonboy,, if you are very impatient, you could try that first.
Of course , you need an API (that is, libraries) to write games in a high level language. That's what Pygame, Rubygame, or Gosu are good for, they really make game programming as easy as it can be, and you don't need to know any C or C++, just Puthon or Ruby, which are all easier to use and learn.
Dragon boy, you're in an interesting situation, knowing assembly but nothing more high level. If you want to learn how to program in a high level language, you'll have to learn the basics first, before you can go on and write a game. It's the same for assembler, really. In short, have a little patience with learning a language. That's what those "Hello world" examples are for, to give you an idea how to use the language.
Did you ever try to write Hello world in assembler? Look here for hello world for DOS assembler:
http://www2.latech.edu/~acm/helloworld/asm.html. That's 17 lines!
In Ruby it's just
puts "hello world"
That's the whole advantage of a high level language, no need to bother with details or opcodes, you use a high level view, in which everything can be handle like an object, which you give commands to do things, and make queries from. But don't 'expect those languages to be like assembler. High level programing is somewhat different from assembler, you'll just have to grab the cow by the horns, and open your mind for something new.
In Ruby, using Rubgame, managing sprites can be as easy as:
sprite_1 = Sprite.new(10, 20, "image1.png") # Make a new sprite at this position and with this image file loaded
sprite_2 = Sprite.new(30, 40, "image1.png") # Make a new sprite at this position and with this image file loaded
if sprite_1.collide_sprite? sprite_2 # if sprite 1 collides with sprite 2 do something
puts "Boom!" # just an example
end
How much easier do you want it? There are competitions in which people are able to write a game in
Python with Pygame or in Ruby with Rubygame or Gosu in only one weekend, but the people who do this,
did learn one of those languages first. If you really don't have patience to learn how to program, then you don't
stand a chance to successfully write a big game.
Don't knock it until you have tried it! Install ruby and gosu or rubygames, python and pygames and give both languages
a spin to see what you like best. If you choose Ruby, I'll be able to mentor you for a while (together with anyone else who
wants to learn how to make games in Ruby), but not on this mailing list. Please send me a private message for that.