1. Design a Map Editor – I’ve always been interested in procedurally generated maps – they allow for limitless content and can work well if they don’t seem formula or break because of the game mechanics.  To that end, I’d like to develop a Map Editor that I can use to create map packages that describe how a map should be generated and what resources to use to represent it in a game world.  The first step in any type of coding project is creating a solid design so that I understand the full specifications ahead of doing any actual programming.
2. Research the Cocoa API – I’m no pro when it comes to Cocoa programming.  In fact, the only experience I have with it is some prototypes that I created for a travel app I was building for the iPhone.  I have a general idea of what types of objects I’ll need to use, but once I finish the design I’ll be able to fully research the libraries that I need to use to create my app.
3. Brush up on Objective-C – the whole messaging component seemed to be the core way to control things from what I remember; however, I’ll definintely need to re-read Learning Objective-C: A Primer to brush up on my knowledge of how the basic functionality of the language works.
4. Create a Roadmap with Milestones – it’s important to be able to track your progress and make consistent steady steps to your goal functionality.  I plan on creating a roadmap to detail what features will be added to the Map Editor and a set of milestones with due dates to track my progress.
5. Program the App and Implement Core Features – once I’ve set up my milestones for the project, it’s time to get down to the business of actually coding the features.  It’s important to focus on core functionality first – hopefully I’ve set up my roadmap properly to focus on the important functions first so that I can get to the next, very important step in the development chain.
6. QA to Test for Bugs and Design Issues – when I say QA here, I’m referring to Quality Assurance.  That is the department in a company that is responsible for making sure that the product you put out meets all customer expectations and works as it is intended.  This is a crucially important part of the process and is often underemphasized by programmers who tend to enjoy designing cool things and coding them – but can’t be bothered with actually testing their own products to see whether they work and more importantly actually are cool.  It’s easy to fall into this pit and I do myself often.  Thankfully I have an A+ QA team that I work with at my full-time job.  Unfortunately, that means I’m going to have to step up my game on this step a lot.
7. Iterate on the App Until it is Feature Complete – steps four and five get repeated again and again until the app finally reaches the point where it has all of the functionality required for a release.  At this point, I will have reached my goal of creating a Mac OS X Cocoa App tool to assist in my game development.

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