Post mortem for The Arena:
--------------------------

There really isn't much to say in this document, but hopefully you'll walk
away understanding the developement process used in creating The Arena.

Welcome to the abyss.

This was a small project that I used to attempt to learn the Allegro graphics
library.  If you look through the source, you'll notice that I have odd names
for the objects.  Particularly, the main cpp file is called bouncer.  This is
a throwback to the original design...  It was intended to be a demo program
of a bunch of balls flying around the screen.  It actually took me a while to
figure that out, but like I said, the whole thing was really only to learn the
graphics library.

After I had learned how to make balls fly and bounce around, and gotten all
the double buffering rot out of the way, I decided to tweak it.  I added
bitmaps to the balls, rather then simply have them be circles.  Then came
following the mouse, then I decided it wouldn't be much work to turn it into
an actual game...  And thus, I did.

You may notice that it's a pretty crappy game, that the reasons for this are
thus:  It was never intended to be a game in the first place.

Anyways, back to the process.  I then waved my +1 wand of wishing and asked
it to finish my game.  Playing nethack, I instead got a cursed scroll of
polymorph.  Oh well, there goes another Samurai.  The last steps of the game 
were to add collision detection, and a title/ending screen.  Doesn't sound 
like much at all, but hey, that's my whole postmortem.

So what's the lesson to be learned in all this?  Start small.  Yes, yes I 
know.  The game sucks.  But believe it or not, I have many friends that are 
more interested in game developement then I am.  Believe it or not, I've 
accomplished more then them in this one game.

It is much, much easier to start a game then to finish one.  Make it your 
mantra.  Start small.  Finish small.  But finish, and you will have 
accomplished something.