Tips and thoghts, from my development of junctioneer.

[Zuu]

As I suggested/promised long time ago (summer 2004), I have written down some tips from what I learnt by working with Junctioneer.


Things that I learnt when I developed Junctioneer:

1. Plan what to do. And follow the plans.

2. Make class graphs, even if they takes long time to figure out. It will save you hours of hacking if you make code that work with future classes.

3. Use STL when its possible instead of creating own linked lists.

4. Use Make-tools instead of writing a Makefile manually.

5. Use Cvs if you dont want to fill your homedir with backups.

6. It is good if you have someone to discuss your ideas with.

7. Make a document or choose an existing document that describes the coding rules for the project, and follow them. This document should describe how to name variables, classes, functions etc.

8. Decide one way to do comments. Perhaps a system that is compatible with doxygen or another document generator.

9. Learn to use all features of ANSI/ISO C++


Thoughts about TEmpire:

a. One of the goals is to make it highly configurable. I think that we have to decide some fixed things that cant be changed. For example how many different degrees a slope can be. If we can decide on something I believe it will be a lot easier.

b. A lot of people demands realism. I dont think a realistic game is a good game. Some realism might be good, so the user don't have to learn a whole new universe. But to realistic easily gets boring.

c. I know that TEmpire is meant for newer computers that is not yet built, which will be faster than todays computers. I believe its important that we dont include a lot of features, and say that tomorrows computers will handle them and not think more about it.


When it comes to the design of the GUI I am willing to give my thoughts not only on the user level but also on the internal design. And I might do some codings to. But I cant promise that I will do any GUI coding. Have done that with Junctioneer for 2/3 year or so.