My Next Learning Project

I’ve long ago established that I learn best from doing things. Even if those ‘things’ never get anywhere, the journey through real problems helps me get a handle on what they are. My army list program got me through WPF, and then MVC. It’s faltered, since I don’t really have the enthusiasm for it that I once did (I’ve spent over a year on it, and as it is a learning project I keep needing to redesign things...)

This brings me to my new idea. Everyone who is anyone in .NET programming at the moment is unit testing. I’ve read a lot about unit testing, and dependency injection, and all those things but I am not entirely convinced I am doing it right. It was when I tried to apply these things to the wargame tools / army list program that I realised I had lost my direction with that one, and it was time to move to something new. Sticking with what I knew best, I initially thought about a WFRP (second edition, naturally) calculator or helper of some sort – then quickly abandoned that idea as madness.

But what about an easier system? Necromunda is a relatively simple game system. Something to calculate the effects of it’s combat, shooting modifiers, exotic weapons and the many charts and tables for the end-game cleanup would be ideal. If I felt adventurous, I could even add in Gorkamorka variants.

The scope I am envisioning is a disconnected class library, capable of managing and running a game of Necromunda. In theory, I could hook it up to a Silverlight, WPF or XNA (ha!) frontend, and all the functionality will be there to go. I would just need to connect certain bits for display. As it is all pure logic, it should be a good way to practice unit testing using a Test-Driven Development approach.

I’ll be documenting each step of the way in here, so I am forced to think about and describe what I’m doing. The rules for the game are available for free (click on the image to get them) from Games Workshop, so it shouldn’t be a problem me mentioning the odd one or two, followed by reams of code.