hello

i think the time has come where i would finally like to learn how to make some kinda of game..... something simple.. like an arcade game..... pong, whatever...

i just need some help to get into the right mindset, and get some ideas about how certain things are usually done in the gaming world

right now, my objective is to make a game called columns...
i attatched the original game... it's a small but very amusing game ...

i made one attempt, just using shape controls (used 6 shapes in control arrays .... each shape array was a column... and there were about 18 indexes in each column......

i had them colored vbwhite... then, i was using some random numbers to generate new sets of 3 blocks that would be random colors... this works great... then, everytime the timer went off i would go through some logic....

check to see if it was at the bottom, if not, move blocks down (really just changing the next block's color, and changing the trailing block back to white.....

this worked..
until i tryed checking to see if the block ahead was white, or if it was cleared.... well i ran into some problems, and im thinking that the way im trying to do this isn't the most efficient or feasible.....

so, could some of you gaming guru's check out the columns game attatched to this post (if you haven't already played it ) and suggest to me how one might go about making something like this?

i just really want the main concepts. (but i probly will be back later asking for help when something goes wrong)...


any tutorials or things like that would be helpful as well.....

i appreciate your time