Affinity Designer was used to create the game play area and assets.
Freepik.com is a free resource for images and vectors. The entire Trump character was from Freepik (https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/donald-trump-portrait-with-flat-design_3317600.htm) and I used the body of the character and podium for the Obama and Putin characters. The faces of Obama and Putin were created by me, but I did use images from the web as guides to getting them to look as realistic as I could. In addition to the characters, the banners (https://www.freepik.com/premium-vector/happy-president-s-day-banner_1747112.htm) at the top of the game area and the curtains (https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/presidents-day-curtains_765085.htm) of the game area were also from Freepik.
When I set out to create a Tic-Tac-Toe game, I knew I was going to need to get an idea of how to even start. The first thing I did was head over to YouTube and search for some videos. I wasn't so much looking for a 'step-by-step' guide as I just wanted to get an idea of what I needed to consider. I found a video by Beau Carnes, someone that works with FreeCodeCamp and someone I have chatted with in the past. His video gave me an overview of what I needed to keep in mind when approaching this challenge. Beau's video was a big help, espcially because he addressed the gameplay AI which was going to be an issue for me. He led me to Mr Abdolsahed's Medium post on the minimax algorithm. Out of everything this app required, the minimax algorithm was the most difficult. I understood what was happening, I just struggled being able to see the code "do it." Originally I tried to adapt the code to fit into my coding style for the game, but after a long period of failure, I finally decided to take the code largely as is and then adapt my code to it. I'm not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing, but either way, it was a learning experience.
This was very interesting project for me. I had been working through FreeCodeCamp when I took a break to do some external research / learning on Javascript. After reading a couple of books and watching hours of videos, I thought I should try to make something. I decided on Tic-Tac-Toe because I thought it would be fairly easy (compared to any other game I might select). I spent a couple of days thinking about the game and how I could put my touch on it and that is how I came up with Presidential Tac-Toe. I decided that I wanted to do something with Politics because I have a BA in Political Science and I am a political junkie. It wasn't until I started searching for how to make the computer move smartly that I realized this was actually a FCC project as well. Besides just completing this game, I think I am most proud of the fact that I came to appreciate the concept that coding isn't about memorizing everything. It's about being able to identify (at any level) what you want to acheive and being able to research solutions. When I consider my abilities as a potential programmer, I am constantly worried that I don't "know" enough. But this project really taught me that my logical mind is suited for programming, I just need to be patient and not expect to know everything.