Since I have a good feeling about eventually finishing this thing up, hopefully within the next week or so, I decided to look around for an installer application and think that I found a pretty good one. Actually, I found this on my hard drive and completely forgot that I had downloaded it long ago. Inno Setup has a very similar look and feel to InstallShield, and has a very simple interface to get your program all packaged up, creates directories and subdirectories if you'd like, option to make a quick launch icon, dekstop, start menu, everything. It looked good to me at least.
After my hunt for an installer, I began thinking about a GUI, at least for the main menu. I really don't want to write my own right now. First reason being, I have no idea where i'd begin. Anyway, I did a quick Google and GameDev site search and came up with ParaGUI which looks promising. I think i'll download it in a couple of minutes and poke around and see if it looks any good.
Though I haven't implemented anything yet as far as game rules, I did write down a little list of criteria that must be met for a piece to be placed, so now I at least have it down on paper.
To do:
-Write function to test validity of move for player (and computer).
-Get some sort of menu system working (hopefully without having to write a whole GUI system myself.)
-Figure out why I can't load images from subdirectories!
-this is kind of an annoying bug, so i'll expand on it.
In my code I can load sounds from subdirectories, like so:
effect1.loadSound("sound/effect.wav"); That's fine, but, if I try the same with loading images (using SDL_image), it won't load them. IMG_Load("image/graphic.png"); //doesn't work
Is this a bug in SDL_image, or am I just klutzing up somewhere and haven't realized it yet? Is there a workaround that anyone that may be reading knows about? If so, i'd greatly appreciate your input [smile].
Anyway, continuing on with my todo list:
-AI (maybe 3 levels)
-And, later on, maybe i'll dive into the world of multiplayer programming. Never touched network programming before, so that should be fun.
I'm sure there are some loose ends i've neglected here, but they'll make themselves obvious later on (I hope).