This was my most-hated, least-favorite theme, and I didn't think it would win so I didn't have any game plans for it. Guess I'll be doing a snake game. Here's a video of awesome snake physics (using pymunk):

http://dump.omgcats.com/snake-1.avi

The way the snake parts are linked together gives a "slithery" effect when the snake makes rapid movement, cool.

Started on the real game today. Not much end-user-visible progress, the real game has a snake moving around but not as well as the demo I put together in a few hours yesterday. However I've got a lot more structural code in place now, and a title screen! Spent too much time trying to figure out how to map mouse/screen coordinates to gameworld coordinates, but may have learned something about the mysterious opengl wz parameter.

I've uploaded my "deadline" submission for the contest. This is the game as it was at deadline time. I plan to keep working on the game and will be posting another - and probably MUCH BETTER - entry before the final upload cutoff. If you want to play a MUCH BETTER version of this game, judge that one. If you're a stickler for rules, judge this one.

This version of the game is not yet fully complete. It's playable, you can attack monsters and pick up potions and win by finding the exit (hint: there can be more than one exit door per level). However you can't do anything with the potions you pick up.

version 1.1 of Snake RPG is now available. to be clear, this version adds significant new functionality and media that was added after the contest deadline. if this bothers you then judge the previous entry. i'll try to do one more final final entry before the server is locked.

New features in this release:

• Sounds and background music (the music takes up most of the space)
• Potions can now be used after being picked up (they restore health)

The last - and best - version of my snake game has been uploaded, as snake_rpg_final.zip. This is much better than the contest entry version.

Improvements over v1.1 (see previous diary entry):

• Monsters drop pieces of string, and the total length is displayed at the end
• Swords and armor that can be equipped
• A training level and two full levels

There's many other bugfixes and improvements as well. PLAY THIS ONE!

Getting pymunk working on the mac is a bit tricky. A hardworking duo on irc produced a mac (intel) version of the Chipmunk shared library:

http://dump.omgcats.com/libchipmunk.dylib

If you've installed pymunk the typical way (as root, python setup.py install) you might need to place this library in the following place:

/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/site-packages/pymunk-0.8-py2.5.egg/pymunk/libchipmunk.dylib

Two people have gotten this game running on Mac so it is possible.

If you can't get the game running or are very confused about what's supposed to be going on...I made a short (30 second) video of the start of the game:

http://dump.omgcats.com/snake_rpg.avi