Re: [Proteusrpg-devel] Characters and documentation

[Neil R. <nmr...@ea...>]

1) Characters, etc.

Charlie and I spoke tonight (Sunday) about characters, menus, and items. He
is going to look through the files we created at CVS and see if any of the
stuff is usable. Charlie also said he would write down some of his own
ideas about characters and items, and make some sample menus that can be
sent to us as graphic files.


2) Documentation

Sam, I downloaded the current version of the game which includes the source
code. I cannot run the game because I use a Mac (without Linux), but I want
to review the source code.

Do you have any documentation of what you have written? If not, thius might
be a good time (before you advance from 1500 lines to 3000 lines of code)
to start documenting how the code works-- with comments inside the code,
and how the code ties together-- with some kind of a module map that shows
how the various code files inter-relate.

Documenting code is part of writing it. Without documentation any code is
hard to understand, even for the person who writes it a year later. You
can't be sure you won't get distracted from this project for a few months,
after which you will appreciate the value of extensive comments in the code
about what does what.

The include files in particular need explanation. Every single defined type
needs an explanation of what it stands for in the game. Every attribute of
every structure should be explained as well. The variable/type names are
not enough.

Some description of your overall plan for the program would be helpful to
me. I suspect you have something-- either in your head or in rough notes
that you could share on the list.

Yours truly,
Neil R