I still am not ready to post any code. (crossing my fingers for this weekend). But here are some screenshots of the progress I have been making. Currently, I have a few of the menu options hooked up. Basically, when the game starts, you can select Storymode or Freeplay.
Going into storymode immediately starts you at the first level, but selecting Freemode gives you the ability to select a particular "level" or gametype you want to play.
Currently two of the "levels" are just about playable. Follow the Leader currently has everything working except for proper collision detection with Bob's "tail" of collected children and then the scattering of his many children after the collision. I also need to hookup the Success and Failure for that level, but the rest it perfectly playable.
Feeding Frenzy correctly loads the level from an XML file (I've actually made a level designer as well for the future I guess) and then Bob can run around the maze eating the fish food to feed his hungry belly. The jellyfish (Feeding Frenzy's equivalent of Pac-Man's ghosts) have no real intelligence at this point and neither Bob nor the Jellyfish collide with each other. I also need to add in the super pellets additional change in behavior for Bob and the Jellyfish. Otherwise, this level too is playable and once all the pellets are gone, the level is Successfully complected.
So with those two levels nearing completion, I just have three more to produce and the accompanying story panels for the Storymode along with all the miscellaenous odds and ends that will be certain to come up. I am still rather pleased with the progress I am making, but the days to seem to be going by a bit quick.
My hardest hurdles so far have been figuring out collision detection for a variety of things. For example, Bob moves through the Feeding Frenzy maze just fine, until you're trying to dart up into an opening when he'll often catch on a corner and that can get quite frustrating. I've also been having some issues getting the collision detection correct for Bob's tail of children in Follow the Leader. Hunting down what exactly is causing a collision when I'm not visually seeing one has been a challenge at times and debugging with a project that uses DirectX hasn't been a nice experience. I'm not sure my computer will forgive me.
Besides collision detection, the largest hurdle by far has been finding the time to actually work on the project and then during that time staying focused and limiting the scope of what I'm doing. For example, I forced myself to keep the graphics in "developer" mode (per Jason's advice). I know I can do much better, but I don't have the time to do the graphics I know I can do and get the development done.
I'm hoping I get some good coding time in this weekend and I'm really going to try and get some code examples up for those of you who may be interested in developing with VB.NET and Managed DirectX.