So Chris’s book Real-World Flash Game Development introduced some concepts that I am not familiar with. In particular vectors (like arrays, only typed), Vector3D (a way of calculating motion), and interfaces (I still don’t understand this) are new to me. I understand vectors, those are not hard. Vector3D was a little challenging to grasp, but I sat down with them today and after a couple hours I had programmed a little interface for making an avatar jump around the screen. I used Chris’s book extensively for this, but wrote my own class using his as a reference. I’m happy with the result and am even more happy that I understand it myself. It always takes a little playing on my part before I really grasp a concept.
On the flip side, I still don’t understand interfaces for classes. It seems like a lot of people speak of them in vague terms without a direct, appropriate, real-world example. I think that’s why they’re hard to grasp. But I’ll keep looking.
So in conclusion, I made some progress that I’m happy with. Yesterday was really frustrating and I was questioning whether I should really be building my own classes or not. But today with the progress I’ve made I’m confident in my decision and direction. If I can tackle one or two problems like this each day, I should have a base game engine in a week or two.