Need help creating a simple 32bit counter

Your process that generates the clock is also triggered by the clock, which won't work. It's a bit like the chicken-and-egg problem ;)

You should have two processes, one to generate the clock, and another one that triggers on it:

  Clockgen: process
  begin
    clock <= not clock after 10 ns; --will give 50MHz clock
  end process;
  Sim: process (clock)
  begin
    if rising_edge(clock) then
        counter_out <= counter_out + 1;
    end if;
  end process;

It is also a good idea to add a reset signal to give your counter (and clock) an initial value. If you don't do that counter_out will start with UUUUU (uninitialised) in the simulator and will become XXXXX (unknown) at the first clock cycle.