Personal Graphics Drawing Postmortem
- How do you feel about this project overall?
Reflecting upon this project, I feel mostly positive about the outcome. I hit many different points of growth. I learned how to navigate reading documentation to not only learn its content but also to adapt it to other situations. This was achieved when I had to adapt opening a window from an application-based environment to a console-based one. I also learned how to use Windows native API to create a graphical environment. A negative about this project was that I spend a lot of time sifting through convoluted code. I realized that the Win32 API that I was utilizing was not optimized very well for the purpose that I was intending for it. This was evident as I tried to draw bitmaps, as the API used a different API for loading a Bitmap from a file. That being said, I believe that the most important aspect of a project is how much you learned from the experience. Personally, I think I learned a lot, and I’m excited to tackle a new project next week!
- Did your project achieve its stated intention (it’s “why”)? Did your “What” align with your “Why?”
I believe that my project achieved it’s stated intention. My goal for the project was to learn how to use Windows API to create the start of a Game Graphics Library. The purpose for this was to have lower-level access to the graphics library code. I love lower-level code, so it was a great experience for me to learn a litte about what is happening behind the scenes.
- Are there other project ideas that your work on this project inspired?
Yes! This project inspired me to look into OpenGL, which I have suspicions that it might be easier to create a Game Graphics Library using that API. I suspect that OpenGL would be much more tailored to the original goal that I had in mind.
- Did your project change significantly over time? Do you feel you adapted to these changes well?
I don’t think my project changed too heavily. If anything, I think that it took me longer than I anticipated to implement features such as bitmaps, that I didn’t get into learning other areas of the Windows API that I wanted to learn, such as an input system. I feel like I adapted very well because I scaled the project down to fit the time scale that I had left. I knew going into it that input was a low priority, and I was able to adjust accordingly.