I'm in the process of adding a couple more sections to the site. You may have noticed the Flash (broken link) section on the main page. Since I don't have access to my Concentric account from work I need some place I can post info on a more timely basis. That and I need something to do while I'm bored at work (not that it happens that often). I'll give small progress updates on the projects along with anything else that pops in my head at the moment.
I also aim to have a Staff section up in the next month. Let's see how it goes.
The new graphic on the main page is courtesy of Dave. I think it's mondo cool.
Scott
I code using the brute-force method. That means I sit down at the computer and decide what would be cool to add to the game, and code it. I create things on the fly and if something doesn't work I'll sit there and hack away until it does.
This isn't exactly the best way to do things. All throughout my college Computer Science courses we were taught to plan everything ahead of time. Know what routines you will need and figure out how they would go together - even write pseudo-code to flesh out the functions. I shunned this procedure since it obviously required more work and forethought (hey I was lazy). Since the assigned programs were relatively simple I could get away with not doing it.
Now I'm finding out that won't work in a real program. I have rewritten substantial portions of my code a couple times now, wasting lots of time. If I had sat down with pencil and paper and sketched out the program first I could have avoided this. Naturally there are some things that you just can't anticipate until you encounter them, but even if I had the basic data structures it would have helped.
Of course this is all a learning process. Any experience with the Yaroze is valuable whether it is entering new code or rewriting what has been typed before. Next time I will be better prepared and can attack the problem from a wiser standpoint.
Case in point. I recently thought of a neat way to show the title and credits for the game. Before I dove in, I took my notebook and wrote the routines out by hand. This let me make notes and jump back and forth between functions much easier than on the computer. When it came time to actually implement them, it took me maybe 4 hours to type them in and get them up and running as designed. I can't imagine it would have taken less than a day if I had proceeded by my usual method.
So I can definitely see the Yaroze being a major help in developing my coding style as well as efficiency.
This web page and all other pages on this site are © 1997 Scott Cartier