Block 4

January 25th, 2009

13:30 Ready to start the final block. This is where I have to have the game complete so the first goal for today is to get the game win determination finished. Once that is done, the AI will be completed. Then, if there is time remaining, I would like to add a sidebar that shows which values have been selected and which ones have not. If there is still time remaining after that, I want a better looking title screen. I highly doubt there will be time left after all that is done but if there is then I am sure that I will come up with something.

14:45 Getting accepted/rejected bids handled properly required a bit more work than I would have liked. Right now the code for handling this is a bit too tied to the user interface. A better method would be to have defined game states. Game over and determining who won the game is now handled.

17:15 The AI for the game was much more difficult than I anticipated. The Bidder AI was fairly simple though taking the average of the remaining bids proved to be too generous near the beginning of the game. My solution was to make the AI much less generous near the beginning of the game and more generous as the final rounds approach. Chooser AI was random with the bid acceptance being an unexpected kludge that had to be dealt with. At this point it was obvious that a sidebar was necessary for the banker so even though I have put in almost four hours today, I think the time needed for a sidebar is a must.

19:00 The sidebar consisted of two things. First, the layout had to be adjusted to allow for the sidebar. This took only seconds, thanks to the fact that the layout is controlled by constants near the top of the code. By adjusting the letter size by 10 pixels per tile, I made more than enough room for the sidebar. The sidebar is just the list of numbers, with a quick check to see if a number has been revealed yet. Whether or not the point value has been uncovered determines the color.

At this point I am out of time but would like to spend more time. Not sure yet how I am going to go about creating the third game in the series. All that I can say for sure is that creating a game in under a day (even if the hours for that day are spread out over multiple days) is really quite restricting. It is an interesting challenge that helps keep my mind working so even though the code produced is not my best code I think it is worth doing these challenges.

January 31, 2009

Some minor bug fixes were made to correct a flaw that was discovered after the game was posted.

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