1) I have ordered a bunch of books from amazon (ie, C++ Primer Plus 5th edition, Direct3D Programming Kickstart, Schaum's Outline of disctete Mathematics, Code Complete 2nd Edition,& the first Game programming Gems)

2) I just started with DevC++ yesterday and I am happy with it, it's better than my Borland 4.5

3) As far as graphics i'm backing off until I feel comfortable with C++, but not completely, I'll still check out 3D engines and books.

4) I would love to be able to build my own from the ground up and I am taking a Math Primer course.

5) I'm a strategy game fanatic (I got hooked on the original Railroad Tycoon and Civilization on my Tandy 1000), so I would like to make very generic low quality 2d strategy games in the hopes of one day being able to make 3D strategy games.

Currently I'm studying up on Classes, I checked out the Irrlicht Engine and I ran into this :: operator or whatever it is, didn't realize it was for C++ class objects, I thought it was something Irrlicht implemented. Had never seen one in C, and it seems classes are a major feature of C++, which I have never used until the past few days.