Hello I have decided to make a Off-Line Game Maker. Now there are many out there but I was going to make one that could make almost any type of game with little or no coding. Now as you may know Game Maker 5 & 6 can make any game, but to make a RPG you need to know GML. RPG Maker XP needs good coding to make a good RPG so I thought why not make one that could make any game (besides 3d; at least for now). A game maker that would be like Game Maker 6 & RPG Maker XP combinded.

But I dont know coding so could you recommend some good places to learn C++

I have had this idea for about a year and I finaly decided to make it happen. I am currently registering a domain name plus the game (RPG) maker would be called: Pro-Maker Z3 ( the Z3 means nothing i just thought it sounded catchy). ANy way any advice would be great.

truecoolness would be the man to talk to. I don't understan this coding mumbo-jumbo.....that's why I stick with console rpg makers.

Well first off this sounds a bit ambitious for one person to accomplish. Second off programming is not something you just learn over night, expect to be learning for at least a year to get up to the level you will need to be to complete this project you are setting forth to accomplish.
Thirdly C++ is a pretty hard language to learn, but it is the standard for the gaming industry, so if you plan on doing that later in life it's a good place to start. Plus it's one of the most versatile languages available.

So all of this is not to scare you off doing the project, just laying it all out on the table for you, letting you know you just don't think up of a great idea and then learn to program and do it in under a year. Trust me I've been programming for 5 years now, and it would take me at least half a year of dedicated work to complete something like this (8 hours a day or more). Plus when you make things user friendly it just triples the amount of work and checking you have to do in code. Making things even easier for the user so they can just click and drag and such, adds even more time.

So that being said, first you will need a compiler and IDE. Microsoft offers a simple version of Visual Studio for free called Visual Studio 2005 Express (get the one for C++).

For learning the book I used to learn was Thinking in C++ Volume 1 which you can get online for free (not a print version and HTML one) at http://mindview.net/Books/DownloadSites . As for other resources just google for C++ tutorials.

But yeah this is going to be no simple task, so I would first think if maybe you could work around the current tools to get them to do what you want, cause what you described would take much longer than learning both of those tools.

So if you really want to do this start learning to use google, google is a programmers best friend (well that and a good IDE).

I can offer you some help, but I have quite a few other projects I'm working on at the moment, so don't expect prompt help from me, but I can help you with beginner things.

best place to learn C++ would be in school. Maybe take a night course or something. Do you know any other programming languages?

Sumi is right, though there are a lot of self taught coders out there so it can be done. Before I went to college I learned BASIC through just the help file for it since I did not have the internet at the time.

But if you don't know any other programming languages, it's going to take even longer, but once you learn one, learning others becomes pretty easy. I would recommend starting with Java, since it has tons of documentation in a central area ( http://java.sun.com ), and is quite forgiving, and has the best IDE out there ( www.eclipse.org ). And it's syntax is based on Cs so it won't be too hard to transition later after you learn how Object Oriented programming works.

C++ on the other hand is very spread out for documentation as there are tons of books on it, and once you learn the core everything else is in 3rd party libraries. So once you learn C++ you'll want to learn either DirectX or OpenGL to be able to do efficient 2D operations. Another thing you might want to try is extending an already existing Game Creation Engine.

One place I forgot to mention is www.gamedev.net . Tons of resources there for learning how to program video games (and as an extension game creation software). So check that out as well.

I know that, I'm going to take a class next year in Game Design & Programing. Currently I could make all the sprites for it (but not really). In any case I knew it would take me awhile. In fact I guessed it would take me about 2 or more years before its even ready to beta test.

But I plan is to learn Game Design & Programing before I recruite people to help me. I know its a big task and it wont be made in a day or even a year.

I mostly wanted advice on good sites ( and I know about google use it a lot), but its best to ask people who know.

Well depending on your school you may learn little about programming there. Maybe I just had a bad teacher but our Game Design class was basically, go make a game, so we did (in Java for that, though we could have used anything). Most of the stuff I learned from a book called Game Architecture and Design, just for the design side of things (won't teach you how to program). Of course there is also a book called Beginning C++ Game Programming which may be more useful to you than it was to me (since I already knew a bit of C++ and a lot of C). It's mainly console based games though, so no sprite help there. Though with just plain C++ you can't do graphics anyway, you need some kind of graphic library.

Another thing you might want to check out is Visual HAM http://www.aaronrogers.com/ham/history.php , a C/C++ IDE for programming GBA games. Though if you want a PC one, then this won't be much help for you. That site also includes a HTML book for making games with it.

But just ask youself if there is something you couldn't extend before starting a new project. Though I know the feeling of wanting to just start from scratch as I do that with most of my projects.

What about using VB?

Well though Lantis will say yes, pretty much everyone else will say no. If you want to use a Visual (Microsoft) language I would suggest C#. This way you will also learn something more similar to C++. VB is primarily for Business applications because they don't know any better. C#, Java, and C++ have been used successfully to create many games though. Plus C# has some pretty good documentation and it's own GUI creator using the Visual Studio IDE (like all the Visual Languages [also refered to as .NET]). Of course C# is basically Microsofts version of Java (a bit different but oddly similar), mainly becuase J++ and J# were pretty much failures. Also C# has good OpenGL and DirectX integration, so it's a pretty good language to use for beginning game programming. Of course for serious games C++ is normally used due to it's speed, and ability to rewrite parts of the code in assembly for the best optimization. Though as compilers keep getting better this will be less and less important.

So you might want to try C# as it is gaining momentum as a good multipurpose (and gaming) language. Most of the documentation for this is on Microsofts website, through the MSDN pages.
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vcsharp/aa336766.aspx

As a side note I would advise against using Visual C++, as that will make learning C++ much more complicated than it should be, and is generally a bad idea. If you want to use .NET, use a .NET language like C#.