Day 2 - Random Maze Generation

As you can see by the gif above, I've made a lot of progress today!  I was able to add a letter on the map for the player to navigate to, then upgraded to a whole word that needs to be found.  Currently, it is always the static "HelloWorld" text, but it will be trivial to have it pick a word from a list, once I add a configuration file for the list of allowable words.

At any rate, once you have successfully navigated to the letter, it is added to the display at the top of the screen and a new maze is automatically generated with the next letter.  On my to-do list for tomorrow is adding a congratulatory message and sound when this happens, as right now its just an instant switch.  I also need to add a splash screen for when the word is complete, because right now it just keeps loading a new maze with a blank character hidden on it somewhere, which the player can technically find but won't be able to see.

I am wishing that the SunshineConsole had a way to scale, because I feel like the target audience (preschoolers) would do better if all the characters were larger.  My son was able to test it out a couple of times, and he definitely appreciated me using the Windows Magnifier to blow everything up to a larger size.  I was pleased to see that, even without the sounds and things, he really enjoyed trying it out (and keeps asking for another turn).  I did notice that he often presses the keys for too long, moving several steps at a time, but after looking into the SunshineConsole code for a bit I don't think that there is a good way to get around that.

What I hope to get to tomorrow, besides the splash screens, messages, and sounds that I mentioned above, is moving as much of the hardcoded parameters as I can into a set of configuration files.  Things like the console and map sizes, colors, and lists of available words.  I might even start to get into varying levels of difficulty, but we shall see how far I get - that would be a good thing to parameterize and put in a config file somewhere.