Okay so let me give you guys a run down of my situation at the moment. My friend (Cartridge Kid.) and I were immediately interested in the idea of designing, programming, and playing our own custom games. So we jumped at the opportunity to own GameBuinos. However being imaginative striving sixteen year-olds with no experience at all with any programming language, I would like to ask you all directly what you think we should do. Our goal is to get somewhat proficient at programming, enough so that when we receive our GameBuinos in July we will be able to make our first game. So in a nut-shell these are our main questions.
1.) Where would we go about completely learning how to program C++ (Or C, whichever the GameBuino utilizes.) from scratch?
2.) Do you need an Arduino board to program using that one Arduino programming software from their website? (May seem like a stupid question, I apologize.)
3.) For the sprites, do you make them in the programming software or do you make them with a completely separate program, such as Gimp or Photoshop?
4.) Is there any way to make like a mock 8-bit retro video game (Like GameBuino) on your computer with C++ as like a test before getting the GameBuinos and if so how?
5.) For the GameBuino screen, is there only one shade of grey or are there multiple shades of grey? (No intended reference to a certain book and sorry if this is the wrong topic to put this question in.)
6.) And this last question goes out to everyone. Does anyone know about the music composing aspect for the GameBuinos? Any information would be great!