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Menu System

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davidcoen

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Used up a weeks worth of holiday time from work, but still did not even get started on the combat prototype.
Took a day to tidy up the prototype code to be more generalise, then another day to refactor the code to run under a state machine and task manager, so now have intro splash screen, game menu, game and ingame menu working. then another day on artwork for the menu (not happy with it, but lots of layers, movement and addative blending can hide a lot of poor art) and about two days write all the menu system, material transition and input, and get an xml to drive menu layout.
so frustrating to get some time to work on stuff, and have it disapear into not much to show, but it was kind of nice after thinking about making this game for years and visulising what i wanted the menu to look like, actually getting it to work was kind of nice.
think i fail at prototype code, as keep on trying to write finished code rather than 'get it working code', could do it for the movement prototype, but upon trying to add to it have ended up refactoring into 'first playable' code style. Also nice to have new game/ load /save and front end menu working this early in the project, menu still only half done, need more explanation text, warning dialog and a list box, but do have generalised framework for buttons and transitions.
perhaps prototyping works better if you don't try to build them ontop of each other, ie, start fresh each time?