What do I have to do to achieve this?

[andrewgray]

I have books on C, Objective C, and C++ (although I don't trust the last one very much). I don't know anything about SDL or OpenGL, but my goal here is to learn something about one of those in the process.

http://homestarrunner.com/sbcollect.html

That's my goal type of game; Secret Collect-esque. You're a thing and you move around and collect the different color things and get to the final thing before the timer runs out. It's really simple.

What language should I learn the basics of to do that? My hope is that I will learn just enough to do that, and knowing some of the language, I will be able to continue and work on other ideas and keep building. Also, what graphics engine should I use for this?

I'm running 10.4.7 on a CoreDuo Mac Mini, if that changes anything.

[OneSadCookie]

As usual with this type of question, you're likely to get about 1,000,000 different answers. The truth is, it really doesn't matter.

Personally, I'm going to point you at http://onesadcookie.com/Tutorials (C, GLUT, OpenGL) as as good a place as any to start.

[hokan]

If your trying to learn one of C/Objective-C/C++, I would recommend that that you start with C as Objectiv-C/C++ are essentially supersets of C - so you'll need a decent grasp of C anyway, if you want to use Objectiv-C/C++.

I would probably recommend something like SDL rather than GLUT which is mostly useful to do OpenGL, while SDL has more support for game related functionality - user input (keyboard, mice), CD handling, timers ...

It is also possible to do basic 2D graphics with SDL without having to learn OpenGL which may mean less stuff to learn, before getting something to work.