Supervisor Meeting

I've met with Mr. Depooter today. It was a simple update and clarification meeting - there were no actual problems to discuss. As I've said I am planning to finish going through the tutorial during the break - which would be until the end of Oct. It's not a deadline which I need to keep or the whole project will collapse, however I do want to make it.

Then I will have to do the design. It will be mostly involving the diagrams of the different structures that I will use within the program, of how the different objects of the real game will be represented in the abstraction of a program. I am not sure how much this step will take me, especially that the amount of work I do here will reflect on how easy it will be to actually write the program. An initial deadline I'm setting myself is three weeks since I finish the tutorial - around the 22nd of November. That will give me the end of November, December, January and half of February to write the program - including the tackling of any problems that I will encounter etc. Also, just like with any other product making work, the design may change throughout the making.

With this amount of time I should be able to finish writing the game (also depends on the game, but about that - in a moment). However if somehow I do not manage to finish the game, or I will only be able to create something lesser, not the complete product, I believe it would in fact be a small damage to the whole project. This is because the ultimate goal of the project is not to make a game, but to learn about creating Windows API based games using C++. The game itself is, one could say, a by-product of this process. Of course I could consider going through the tutorial all I need to know about it, but one only really learns programing by doing it. Also, what is the point of learning it if I wouldn't use it after all?

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A few days ago I wrote a practice program from the end of chapter 3. It was really quite simple in what it did, yet it did require the use of some new techniques and features. It put the typed text into its title bar. I have also implemented the backspace as the erasing button - by no means was it automatic. Then later when I showed the program to my dad, he used backspace completely without thinking about it - it was natural and he took it for granted. It really felt good to see someone use the program (even so simple) in such an intuitive way. I think this is one of the big things when one is making things that are supposed to be used by others - it brings great satisfaction to see others enjoy and use your product.