Quiet Update

I've started to see the beginnings of my program coming together, although my code is becoming more complicated and I am getting to the point where I seriously need to write some comments for my code. Also my main class that deals with setting up everything else and getting everything running is a big mess - this is mainly because every change I make usually ends up changing the main classes code and now I have countless commented out code chunks.

Coding wise I've got to the point where I can open my program into full screen or windowed mode and change the resolution, colour depth and refresh rate by using command line arguments or by editing a text file. I've started to put in the code to move through phases of the game, meaning I will be able to have more than one screen. I'm going to try and add an option menu next that will allow me to change all the screen information inside the game. I also need to add a method or modify an existing method to update my text file so my game options have persistence.

Package And Class Info

My chosen development method is 'keep coding until something sticks', so my source code is currently a big mess even though the application doesn't do a lot yet. I have written absolutely no documentation for the program (unless, of course, this post counts).

I've divided the program into four packages. The main package is called LexDanceDance which contains everything else. The only class inside the package is the main class which starts the program.

The first package inside LexDanceDance is called ‘Objects’. This package contains classes that represent on screen objects. At the moment there are three classes in the package. The first is 'ScreenItem' which holds all the basic information about screen items (such as their screen position). ScreenItem is a abstract class (even though I've left the construction methods as public not protected - which is stupid).

I have two other classes. One is used to represent text on screen and it's called 'TextItem'. The final class is going to be used to represent a menu but it is not finished yet. This class is called 'OptionListItem'.

The second package is called 'controller'. It will contain all the classes that deal with the input devices. At the moment it only contains one class called 'KeyboardControlClass' and it deals with keyboard input, obviously.

The final package is called ‘Graphics’ and deals with all the on-screen stuff. There are two classes here. The first is called ‘screen’ (which actually doesn't do anything and will be removed eventually); the second, and last, class is called ‘DancePanel’ which overwrites the JPanel class and deals with all the on-screen stuff.

While it does not appear that I have got very far I believe I have reached a point where I can start to play with harder stuff. My first challenge is to get full-screen mode working. After this I intend to set up a double-buffer and then I can start on getting the dance mat input working.