Switch To XNA

Saturday 23rd February - Continued programming again. Looked into loading pictures in C# to display the unit and be able to animate them. Realised that it would be quite complicated to achieve what I wanted to do and would have to play about with lots of graphics coding which is not the point of the project. Thus I will be using the XNA framework. I did say inside my proposal that it was a possibility that I would use the XNA framework as I didn't really know how to use it at the time and did not know if the learning process would be a larger overhead than the overhead of programming the graphics in plain old C#. As I have been learning XNA anyway and its graphics are much eaiser to manage and use, it was a logical choice to make the switch at this stage. So have been watching some more of the XNA programming videos from www.3Dbuzz.com (11 1/2 hours on the 23rd, 56 hours to go of currently released stuff) Currently watching video 93 as i type. Also looked up the Creators Club (http://creators.xna.com/)

Tuesday 26th February - Progress meeting with Euan. Talked about using XNA, he seemed happy with the change. Added some interesting things... Having multiple arrays (or array of structs makes more sence) for the pathfinding/fuzzy logic. 1 array for the terrain and the difficulty of transversing it, a second for line of sight of the enemy (for use depending on how brave the units are feeling i.e. if 100% health, full squad, full ammo: being in the line of sight of the enemy is not a big reason to avoid a tile), a third for the amount of frendlies killed/hurt in that tile (more likely to avoid tiles that have frendly dead bodies), perhaps a forth for where cover is around the map (more injured the units the more likely they will head for cover) etc.
He said something else I was going to include but I completly forgot after leaving the room :( hopefuly it will come back to me.

Wednesday 27th February - Just updating the blog before going to the lecture on... No idea, I think he probably just give the "Progress Reporting" lecture again... or talk about time management... joy! We will soon see.

looking at watching more videos after the lecture until 12 (when i have a meeting with some fokes about doing Dare To Be Digital in the summer) then will spend all Thursday watching them too, hopefuly get a fair chunk of them watched by the weekend and can get started on the programming... oh no wait! I have to do a progress report... why?!? we have progress meetings every week *sigh* also have a maths exam on Monday the 3rd *sigh* lol oh well needs to get done. So probably no progress this week, hopefuly have some actual code done for the next time I meet Euan, unless Bob springs upon us some other pointless activity to "manage our time/project" or whatever.