Jim,

I know what you mean. I personally like smaller programs (it's like having a tidy house). Makes linking painless and debugging easyer. But features will probably break the bank someday.

Sounds are tricky. To keep up with the quality of your application it needs to be CD-quality. To make the sound seem continous we need to either make the pattern really long or layer it with additional sounds (just like you do with the bubbles visually).

Can you support multiple layers, more then one wav file playing at once? I assume this is supported in directx.


To solve the size problem, what about creating a "fish" file format. Your program could come with 10 fish built into the executable and the rest could be downloaded. This would also allow others to create there own fish!!!

Just a thought on the fish format:


StingRay.zip // A zip file could contain a fish
-----------------
fish.ini // Describes fish (see below)
image.jpg // Image map of fish
imageMask.jpg // Image to blend with fish image
bumb.jpg // Bump map of fish
bumbMask.jpg // Image to blend with bump image
structure.dfx // 3D structure of the fish


fish.ini
----------------
[info]
name = Sting Ray
desc = A cool looking fish I want to have
diet = little fish?
author = Fish man
image = image.jpg
mask = image.jpg
bumpmap = bumpmap.jpg
structure = structure.dfx
size = 2
speed = 3
randomizeSize = true
randomizeSpeeding = true
digging = 8
RandomizeMaskBlending = 4 ; 0-10
detail = 9
shyness = 7
smart = 7
hungry = 5
yawning = 0
* a lot missing *


Note:
o All numbers are in ranges are between 0-10
o Masks could be blended in randomly to make each instance of a fish look different
o Fish files would allow you to test your program with out recompiling...


I'm veering off the path a bit but this could allow you
to minimize your executable size.

-James