Pacman (XNA)

So, I haven't totally decided to give up on the Breakout game or the Pong game yet, but unless I get some feedback asking for more Breakout or Pong (which I doubt will happen) I think I'm going to move on to the next game. The previous games certainly aren't at the release stage yet, and may never will be. But my goal here wasn't to create a super-awesome Breakout game. It was to learn to program video games (and contribute to open source software). Breakout and Pong really taught me a lot about XNA and Java game creation respectively. And, when I finally hit up C++, I may have to return to these games to teach me that as well. However, since I'm staying with XNA for a while, I'm going to step it up a little and create a Pacman style game. I hear the excitement brewing.

Actually, this decision wasn't entirely my own. Personally I figured by now I am fully capable of making a decent Call of Duty replica game, however, I read this article by Geoff Howland on the gamedev.net site which goes through the steps you should take to become a decent game programmer. He says to start with Tetris and then move to Breakout. I figure Pong works well enough in place of Tetris, and I have Breakout "done". So, his next step is Pacman. Many aspects will be the same of course such as user input, collisions and sound. However, there will be a few differences like basic AI and using a map with boundaries other than a square. I think the map will be the trickiest thing to work out. Anyway, I'll let you know how it goes.