I appreciate all the advise here. I believe I will need to just start at the beginning and (finally) learn Lite-C. For all the years that I have developed game graphics and levels, you would think that I would have done a bit more than to have picked up only a few scraps of code here and there. But that's about it, really. The thing is, I truly don't like GameStudio's manuals. As a non-programmer, I don't see how I can learn Lite-C from it, but I suppose I should take it slowly and try out a few things.

Oh, and the project was just for fun, learning, and to try out some ideas.

Or maybe you look for a nice existing project here, ask for the sourcecode and
pimp it up graphically.

There should be several working games with good gameplay
but with less fancy graphics.

Sure. But I really wanted to do a pinball game. Anyone know of any projects like that floating around?