Hi, everybody. I've been studying C# (using Visual C# 2008 Express) for several months and I think I've got the basics down pretty well at this point, so now I want to create a moderately ambitious application to consolidate and grow my skills. Any suggestions for what kind of app would utilize the full set of skills that would be expected from a preprofessional level student?

There are probably skills that are useful/needed in every field, but knowledge of OpenGL might not come to its full potential in testing the quality of new cryptographic methods. Similarly, those 10 years of math and physics studies probably feel like a waste of time if you're put into developing simple 'desktop games.'

Some possible applications could be:

A roguelike!

Everyone wants to make a roguelike, right? You'll need...

1. to have a game engine! A great undertaking in itself.
2. to be able to interact in the game world (pick up stuff, talk, attack baddies)
3. to have a save feature. Or at least it would be nice.
4. to have a story. While most roguelikes seem to have stories such as "retrieve the amulet" or "destroy the evil", no one says it HAS to be that way. Create a compelling story and your roguelike will become famous!
5. to have a database of items, monsters, everything. Even better, make it XML-based so people can easily add their own stuff into your game ('mod' it).
6. and much more...

So as you can see, almost every item is a good project in itself. And it looks good on the resume, possibly.

Chess

Another pretty challenging. With AI even more so. Even without AI, you'll have plenty of work. Chess is all about 'can this piece move there' (from your point of view. From the players' and AI's point of view it's more 'what happens when this piece moves there') and that's your major challenge.

Hangman

Not overly difficult and it's very nice when you get it done. Incorporate the ability for the user to make their own set of words to guess for the extra fun and some text file parsing (or just use a database management system).

A text file parser
A program that parses a text file. The user gives the program a text file. The file consists of entries each divided into fields. The user tells the program how many fields are in each entry and what [sequence of characters] separate each field from the next. Then the program parses the file. What you do with the extracted data is probably not so important, but you could write it into a database for the heck of it.

Or make it a HTML parser and extract tags, properties, property values, tag contents etc...

A text adventure game

You'll need a parser and stuff. And a story too.



Roguelike and chess would probably look good on the resume. Then again I might be completely wrong since I'm not 'in the business.'

Ok have you heard of SourceInsight?

Its a very very intelligent code editor for C/C++, java, C# etc.

But i haven't come across any open-source which is nearing it...........

I initially wanted to give it a try to code one out ......... but TIME. My brain is filled up with image processing algorithms that i'm busy with now!!!

You might as well give it a try if u have time.lolz.

Well if you wan more interesting and innovative projects. Try Home automation. Get some hands on on the real world!!