Goal Clarification and Process Update

Programming (in C++) is something I have been interested in for over two years now. However, I always found it difficult to continue developing it as my hobby in the times of the heaviest school work - it is something that demands a lot of time and commitment. Even when I had more free time, I found it more difficult than other hobbies due to the fact that it requires hard mental work, which is as tiresome as work. Therefore in 8th grade I decided to use the opportunity to make it part of my school - to have it as my personal project.Then I made a simple word game using the Win32 console. This time I wanted to move my skills further and use the Windows GDI - the usual windows structure found in Windows.

I am planning on becoming a game programmer in future, so this project does not only allow me to explore my hobby but also allows me to learn bases of my future career.
Therefore, the most important part of my goal is not the finished product - the game itself, but everything that I will have to learn and use in order to create it. The game will simply be a kind of presentation of what I have learned. Shortly, my goal is to learn about using Windows GDI with C++ through the creation of a computer game.

The process will be all about Approaches to Learning due to the heavy concentration on the skills that I want to gain through it, as well as Human Ingenuity - I will be designing and creating a program and will have to face the challenges that will come with it.

The general outline of the whole process looks like the following:

1. Go through the "Od zera do gier kodera" tutorial - a tutorial that covers the bases of game programing.
2. Design the game (in programing terms. I will design not the game mechanics, but the implementation of the game I will choose into a C++ program. The project is not about inventing a game, but about creating a computer game - the program.
3. Write the program.

The first step is essential before I can go on any further - I need to know what it is I am able to do before I start even thinking of the design. After that I could theoretically start writing the program without doing the design, but that would be suicide :) It is important to think through it and create a plan before I start working on it - just like when creating a physical product. However the design may change as I am already writing the game, when I reach problems I have not thought of.

Throughout the 3rd step I will heavily be using tutorial and MSDN - the C++ and Windows programing documentation site in order to solve upcoming difficulties and to find ways around problems.

Lastly a bit on the game choice - looking at the project focus it really is not that important what game I will bring into the digital grounds. It could be tic-tac-toe as well as chess. Of course it would take more work and be harder to implement the mechanics of chess. The only strict thing I will have to keep to is that I can't have computer players- I am simply not able to create AI yet. Therefore I can either create a single-player game such as solitaire or a "hot-seat" multi-player. I was thinking of creating a digital version of Monopoly, however I think that might be a little too much to implement into the game. Right now I am thinking of checkers, however it is not the final decision yet and I will not have to make one until I finish going through the tutorial.

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At the moment I am still going through the exercises of the 3rd chapter in the tutorial. Soon I will be starting the 4th and last one.

As of the problem with Visual C++ on my computer - seems like can not really do anything about it. No one answered the forums posts where I asked for help - obviously no one had an idea of how to solve the problem. I will therefore try a different IDE (The entire programing environment, including the compiler). Most likely I will try a Borland compiler.