Well... i think that it's great when someone is interested in the MD... it doesn't happen to often these days unfortunately, but anyone who has an idea needs to really make a solid and FINISHED document on how the game works, this needs to includes how the physics would work, all the enemies and how they would attack you, all the features of the engine etc...
It needs to include lots of pictures as well, think of it as a tutorial on how to understand your game concept
All i got from this particular person's concept was "exciting, maniac genesis sidescroller" and that is incredibly vague...
The HUD and stuff descriptions were all pretty basic and really nothing exciting to work on, and he lacked a story and any real characters...
I know this is a topic from 2 years ago, but just thought i'd post with the hope that it helps anyone else who is thinking of asking for help
Don't get discouraged... game programming is really hard, but people are willing to help you in not just this one but multiple forums!
I'd say you should learn C first then C++ (Which is basically like C with some tid-bits added on )
Go to
http://www.cprogramming.com/ they're always useful
You can also find video tutorials on youtube ( very useful for those of us with a short attention span ;D )
But you should use the videos as a complement to the written tutorials which are more complete (video tutorial series are very rarely completely finished)
For graphics once you understand the basics of C or C++ you can start learning SDL (which adds certain keywords and stuff that allow you to display graphics in a relatively simple way)
http://lazyfoo.net/SDL_tutorials/index.php i recommend these tutorials
geared for C++ but can be ported to C if you replace classes with structs and stuff
When you don't understand something, google it, if you can't find any answers or don't understand them(like me, i'm an airhead
) go to the forums and ask, above all, be patient.
No one learns anything overnight and you have to be prepared for that, just have fun making your computer
your bitch doing all sorts of stuff that you tell it to do (I think of it that way, makes it more fun
)
Assembly... is not entirely necessary...
That's why we have SGDK and GCC but at first i'd suggest make some PC SDL games, they have better graphics and everything
And after that, start getting into Game Console Development