Blanca's+Reflection+2010

Blanca Zelaya-Rincón May 27, 2010 Reflection on Snake Game Project, May 2010

The purpose of this project was to choose a classic arcade game, and to recreate it by writing out the program. Mr. Alexander and I worked on this project together, and we decided that we would attempt to recreate the classic snake game. We started out by drawing out our ideas on a piece of poster paper. We also worked on writing out the pseudo code for the program before we started to get more into the programming. After we did this, we started creating the classes, and the objects. We had some problems along the way, and most of them we could solve through debugging. Some of the things that we had to fix were really small, and silly mistakes, but others were more challenging to find the root of. In order to find the roots, we used many print lines. These proved to be extremely useful in our process of debugging. One of the problems that we had was that whenever over snake object intersected with the food, it would not add a snake segment. In order to figure out why this was not working, we used a lot of print lines in the area which we thought was causing the problem. In the end, through the use of these print lines, we were able to figure out exactly why the snake object would not add a segment. However, in the end, we could not figure out how to make it so that our snake object, (composed of segment objects), move like a snake. Part of the problem was that we could not figure out how to add snake segments to the correct space when the snake object intersected the food. If I could do this project over with the knowledge I have now, I would probably try to simplify my thought process more. I seem to always complicate things, even if they do not need to be complicated, and I feel that this was one of those times. I would probably start completely from scratch, and I would find a way to write the program without so many objects. Even though the project failed at the end, I know that if we had more time, we could figure it out. However, since we do not, I know that I learned a lot from this experience. I learned that I need to take more risks when trying new things, instead of not trying just because I am scared of what the outcome will be. I have also acquired some skills that I can use for any sort of problem-solving related area.