What a great summer !

Work has been a bit busy recently so Dave the Dog has not really progressed much further. In the few spare minutes before work I've been able to design the XML that describes Dave's village. I have added a couple of simple screen descriptions so that I can work on the next major area which is the code that will import the data and create a screen and all its elements. These elements define the exit points and the areas that Dave and the other villagers can walk. Any objects that can be collected or interacted with are also held in this XML. I wasn't going to use XML but it makes life so much easier to add extra data as my ideas change. This file will only be loaded when the game starts so there will be no performance problems once the XML is read in and screen objects created. As Dave leaves a screen the code just gets the next appropriate block of pre processed data from the list. It's this screen manager and list code that I'm working on at the moment. I hope that over the next few weeks I'll be able to walk between a couple of screens and be restricted to areas of the screen defined by the XML.

I feel a lot fresher after my summer holiday. For a change I didn't spend anytime thinking about programming. Instead I went kayaking on the sea and photographed steam trains and waterfalls. Unfortunately the English summer also showed why most people go abroad for their holidays. Shown below is a picture of Sidmouth (Devon) in the middle of August. Please note that I did not go out in a kayak whilst the weather was doing this.