I decided that I need more practice with TDD and so skipped quite a few unit tests to get a blank SDL window up that I can close. The 10 passing tests I currently have were great for splitting off a Timer class from my Game class, but I can’t afford to spend too much time making existing functionality work better.
When I start working on the various game entities, I know TDD will be a big help, but for now I have put it on hold to get the really simple run() loop going. Of course, in order to get to the point where I can write more code than the basic boilerplate, I need to sketch out a rough design.
When I was trying my hand at game programming a few months ago, I had a hard time doing TDD productively in the prototyping phase, though it did come in handy a bit later. Then again, I’m in the opposite situation from you, so I don’t know how applicable my experiences are: I’ve been doing TDD for years, whereas that was my first try at game programming in decades.
Left by David Carlton on August 10th, 2008