It’s been a while since I posted an update so here goes:
I’m in the process of converting my code over to use the XNA framework. This has been pretty slow going I’m afraid. Mainly because a little voice in my head keeps telling me “Just do it slacker, this’ll be easy”. This was not the voice of Mr Common Sense - but I still listened to it, and the rest is history.
That’s not to say that XNA is harder than old-skool Managed DirectX that I was still a beginner at. No, indeed it looks a whole lot easier in many ways.
The reason I’m finding things difficult is simply that I jumped in too deep from the start. Instead of rattling off some simple “Hello World” apps, I chose to jump right in to the XNA sample game and extract from it’s architecture the nicest bits as a base for my rewritten game. It’s not that difficult, so seemed sensible at the time.
Here’s the catch.
In doing so I’ve spent more time getting to know someone else’s code, than learning the technology itself. When you write code yourself it becomes ingrained in your brain. When it’s someone else’s code, it simply takes time to become familiar with. No matter how good or well commented it is.
So that’s where I’m at. I now have a nice base to work from, but it’s still very much back to square one. I think I’m quite close to being able to render the Spitfire in the centre of the screen. Kind of sad really.
The moral of the story?
“Little steps… LITTLE STEPS!!!”