Day 3 - Minimum Viable Product

Success!  I have made it to what I consider the minimum viable product.  We have a main menu screen, where you can select how long of a word to hunt, which is chosen randomly from a list of available words in a configuration file.  The options on the menu can be selected either by pressing the letter next to the value, or by using the arrow keys to navigate to a selection and then pressing another key to select it.

Once the level is selected, the word is randomly selected from a list in a configuration file, so anyone downloading the program will be able to add additional words if they desire.  I collaborated with a professional educator to make sure that the words are at the right developmental level for a beginning reader, avoiding such things as silent letters and unusual phonetics (at least for the shorter "beginner" words).  Finding each letter will yield a success message, along with another for completing the entire word.

I was also able to move a lot of my constants into a config file, rather than having them hardcoded in the main files, which again means that anyone downloading the program later can adjust them if desired.  If I expected to have time, I would consider adding a menu to edit these values from within the program itself, rather than by going to the text file, but I'm pretty sure that my existing goals are already enough scope to use my time.

Speaking of my existing goals, tomorrow I'm going to jump in and try to work on Adult Mode, where I can make everything a little more complicated.  If you select Adult Mode, then all the letters will be available in just one map, which will be significantly bigger (maybe based on the length of the word?), and you can find them in any order.  Also, there will be additional "enemy" letters on the map, that are trying to attack you and stuff themselves into your word.  You will have to remove them before you can find all the correct letters.  Hopefully I'll be able to complete all of that in the next two days!