   Beginner with some questions.  Whats new?
  Hey i just wanted to make a top down game.  Some thats 2d, could be isometric although im not clear on the real difference.  I guess isometric is built around tiles?  A grid of sorts that you move your sprites/chars around?  Anyways, i have done some C++ and Ruby programming.  Made simple text based games, some drawing objects and what not.  But how would i create my environment, sprites(if thats the correct term), etc.  Basically the graphics of the programming.  I got the whole controlling positions in arrays, keeping track of health, etc, but like i said, its always been all text based.  Even with some text generated graphics that would repeatably update.  So like a lame graphical interface lol.  Im guessing this is where an SDK or Engine comes in?  If so, any suggestions?  And if not, could you point me to some actual posts or tuts that would cover such ideas or concepts?-Edit-Im going to do tetris so i can really get to whole simple graphics down and some game logic and hopefully that will answer some graphical questions, but any advice or further help is still greatly appreciated.   
  If you feel you are capable of moving beyond console mode "graphics," you may want to look into SDL or SFML to help get some 'real' graphics up and running.   ;  Sounds like a good start. Your first decision is to figure out which rendering technique you want to use, GDI (windows based, slow), OpenGL or DirectX.If you choose OpenGL then you can take a look at my website to see how you can get started in making a rendering context and getting things on the screen.  Once I finish all the video tutorials for Ghost Toast, I'll be starting a new video tutorial series covering 2D games..... but that won't be until after christmas which is my guess.   