argh
It's frustrating. A while back I went and cranked out a UI system, and, while it's taken a lot more work than I expected, it feels like it's finally close to complete. And then I went to actually build some screens in it, and found out that it very cleanly and conveniently solves exactly half the problem. You can almost see the line where neat and orderly code dissolves into spaghetti.
Which is frustrating! Have I said that already? Yes. As soon as you get into the sucky part, your productivity goes way down; no matter how easy you make the easy parts, if you venture into the bad parts, it's a horrible, time-consuming slog. Which sucks and is no fun! So it looks like I need to design another half UI system. At least it feels like I should be able to make it as a fairly natural extension of what's already there, not a complete rewrite.
On a brighter note, I have rediscovered C#'s lambdas! They turn your code into unreadable javascript nonsense, but they sure are fun. (I've also dipped my toe into C#'s reflection stuff, which... is pretty neat! I sort of admire C++'s doctrine of absolute purity, but it sure makes for a more usable language when you crack open the shell a little bit.)
There's also talk of maybe doing iPhone stuff. Which could be kind of cool. I'm generally kind of dismissive of iPhone gaming--the interface is just not that reliable; imagine playing a real game, but with mittens on--but as long as we pick our game and genre carefully enough and stay away from real-time stuff requiring precision, there's room to do some cool things. And of course the UI system only vaguely handles multitouch and gestural crap, but that could be an interesting problem to tackle.
Which is frustrating! Have I said that already? Yes. As soon as you get into the sucky part, your productivity goes way down; no matter how easy you make the easy parts, if you venture into the bad parts, it's a horrible, time-consuming slog. Which sucks and is no fun! So it looks like I need to design another half UI system. At least it feels like I should be able to make it as a fairly natural extension of what's already there, not a complete rewrite.
On a brighter note, I have rediscovered C#'s lambdas! They turn your code into unreadable javascript nonsense, but they sure are fun. (I've also dipped my toe into C#'s reflection stuff, which... is pretty neat! I sort of admire C++'s doctrine of absolute purity, but it sure makes for a more usable language when you crack open the shell a little bit.)
There's also talk of maybe doing iPhone stuff. Which could be kind of cool. I'm generally kind of dismissive of iPhone gaming--the interface is just not that reliable; imagine playing a real game, but with mittens on--but as long as we pick our game and genre carefully enough and stay away from real-time stuff requiring precision, there's room to do some cool things. And of course the UI system only vaguely handles multitouch and gestural crap, but that could be an interesting problem to tackle.