I've recently taken up a huge interest in game and simulation programming as it's something I've always wanted to try since I was in grade school. I've began looking around at colleges and schools in my area that offer classes in this field, or something similar. Does anyone have any recommended readings or programs that I should check out to help me learn and study?

There was a 500+ level grad class in my curriculum..."Simulation of Physical Systems" was a good intro for programming "natural" algorithms.

Maybe this may help :
http://www.euclideanspace.com/mjbWorld/index.htm

you can download the mjbworld program here :
http://www.euclideanspace.com/mjbWorld/program/index.htm


Hth

Vassago,

Not an answer to your question but I thought it might be interesting.

Microsoft Game Studio Express (http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/xna/) (Beta 2)
The XNA team is proud to announce the availability of the XNA Game Studio Express Beta 2, aimed at helping students and hobbyists build games for Windows and the Xbox 360. This release is targeted at Windows game development only, and contains several changes from the previous release.

Vassago,

Not an answer to your question but I thought it might be interesting.

Microsoft Game Studio Express (http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/xna/) (Beta 2)

Yeah, I was reading up on that when they released it. Seems to be a pretty nice little tool, but I'm wondering what the catch is. Do they own anything you create...etc.

have also seen on the tellie that there are game programming schools, but I think most are located in like california and florida

did a quick google search and came up with a site that has a list of some schools.

http://www.gameprogrammer.com/links/schools.html