Yes it sure is.

We're 2 weeks away. And now we have theme voting. So that's good. I'm scared, excited, and tense at the same time. This is my first PyWeek. And I'm really eager to do it.

I wish everybody else good luck. And if anybody needs cross-platform testing, I'm happy to help (I have Windows, OS X, and a Linux Distro.)

For a teenager, I think I'm doing pretty well in terms of time management.

        Anyways, I did some brainstorming today. I narrowed it down to a couple of ideas. I decided to take a safer route and instead of choosing what I would think is fun, I tried to ask my family and friends what they thought would be more fun. I'm still waiting for some of my friends to reply, but I think I've got a general idea of what I'm going to do.

        In the meantime, I started building a basic foundation for the game using the Pygame module. So far I have a loading screen, and I'm working on a basic menu screen. It's still got a long way to go (considering it's the first day.), but I'm working on it.

        I'm also kind of a clean freak, so I've been writing down all my ideas, documentation, and important information in a Notebook. And, I added a Table of Contents (yes, I'm a really, really, really organized person, you should see how clean my room is.).

Well, I'm gonna go to bed and work on this a bit tomorrow morning.

        Wow, I had a lot of caffeine and sugar today. Never give a kid too much sugar or caffeine, no matter what their reason is, whether they are studying, getting up early, or it's their birthday. NEVER let a kid have too much caffeine or/and sugar. Deep Thoughts by OrionDark7.

        I am almost done with the Menu GUI, I'm also adding some Game Save functionality. I've added complete button functionality. I made a Platformer Engine for the game, and I'm adding in certain objects to accompany it. I was able to develop the first level, and here it is:

        Oh, I forgot to tell you the theme of the game! It's about these starving mice living in a pantry, and they decide to take over the kitchen to be able to eat. I call it Rodentopia (yes, it needed to be that overexaggerated.).

What I'm planning on adding next:

• NPC's that you can talk to, so I don't have to explain the entire plotline in the beginning of the game.
• Mouse Traps, so there's actually a point to this game.
• Better graphics. (Can anybody point me to a tutorial on how to use Photoshop? I'm really bad at it...)
• More food other than cheese. (Cheese gives you ten points, so I'm thinking if you eat... let's say Jam, you get thirty points.)
• Making the platforms not look like wooden planks sitting in some hoarders pantry.

        It will be much harder for me now, as tomorrow I have school. And I was caught in a really busy week. I have Robotics, a Band Concert, and I have to go to my friends B-Day party. Ah well. I'll work something out.

Also, I'm hoping to have a Python 2.7 version of the game on this site tomorrow, so if you wanna try it, come here tomorrow.

             

        Okay, so I didn't get as much work done as I hoped. I was able to make fully-functional NPC's, that when you run into them, it takes you to their dialog screen. So now that I have almost as much as I need for in-game objects done, I started building some levels. I didn't get very far. I only got about 4 levels done, and those aren't really challenging. It's just an introduction.

        I also added game saving/loading functionality. When you exit the game, the game will save your score and the current level you're on to one of 3 different save files, which you pick which to load/save from when you start the game.

Other than that, that's pretty much it. I now do have a downloadable .zip archive for Python 2.7 and Pygame users (I recommend at least using Pygame 1.8.). You can download it here.

Have a good night everyone (Assuming we are in nearby timezones.)

        Yesterday I did some minor graphical tweaking to some things, like the background and some of the new foods I made. I made jumping a lot more smooth, making a pygame.USEREVENT timer that went off every 2 milliseconds to change the y by a little bit.

         I did add a few more foods to the game. I added Peanut Butter, Jam, and Cookies. Peanut Butter is worth 20, Jam is worth 30, and Cookies are 50. I also was finally able to get to implementing mouse traps in the game, it worked first try without any major issues. So that saved me some time.

I didn't release a version of it yesterday, but I will today.

        I decided to re-write the plot, it's the same story, I just made a couple of tweaks so you get right to the action instead of the first 4 levels being introductory levels. I'm taking out a bigger chunk of time this morning to get that done, considering it's 3 AM as I'm writing this. I also added laser cannons as a special type of trap.

        We had a power outage yesterday, around 7:45 PM. No data or progress was lost, so I'm still going to be able to participate. In case it happens again my laptop is fully charged, and I have the latest copy of my game on a Flash Drive. So I think I'll be OK.

        So I was able to get a good portion of the levels done. I still have a long ways to go. But I'm going to work on it at some point this afternoon and hopefully finish by tomorrow. I also did a bit of more storyboarding and brainstorming at school yesterday. That's pretty much it.

        I finished my brainstorming today. I don't have time to do any work today, I'm at a Magic Tournament at my friends house (who knew Ixalan had so many dinosaurs? Oh wait a minute, Ixalan is mainly attacking. Never mind.). I've broken down all the levels into separate parts, 5 exactly. I should be done around 9 - 10 AM tomorrow (No, this is not my last day. I'm in a far off time zone, so I stared on Saturday the 14th, and will end on Saturday the 21st.). I'm not to package any binaries for macOS or Linux. I'm just going to do one for Windows, because that is much easier for me to do, and I don't know how to package binaries for Linux, and I don't have the time to learn either.

        I'm so tired. And I only have to go through one more day running on 6 hours of sleep. I'm going to do a lot of sleeping after this (and I will be voting, don't worry.). I might give out some random award, don't know what it will be yet.

        I have to go play another match with somebody soon, so I'm gonna go, and take a short nap.

        With 40 minutes left to spare, I have finished all the level building, the boss level (it looks like it was drawn in MS-Paint by a 5 year old, I didn't have much time, so I decided to call the boss "DerpCat", to make it seem right.), my LICENSE.txt file, README.txt file, and everything else.

        Thanks for letting me participate, this has been the happiest week of my life (No, I'm not kidding.). I've had so much fun doing this and I can't wait to be back for PyWeek #25. Good job to everybody who entered, and good luck in the judging process.

Have a good night, Orion.

 

Looks my game pissed some of you guys off, in that case, I did my job correctly.

I screwed up big time on a lot of things:

1. Yeah, my physics engine could've been better, I realized you shouldn't be able to run into walls (Usually on other physics engines I use for games, I fixed this, but not this time I guess.) and I realized the gravity was horrible, and the jumping seemed pretty weird.
2. I really should've done better on sound-effects. Even if I had got them from some free online site instead of trying to make them (not saying I did.), then I think I would've done a little bit better.
3. The "DerpCat" level was kind of odd, and I think I didn't put enough time and effort into it.
4. I didn't spend enough time on animations and special effects, I could have added some more things here and there, like that little gray dot nobody was able to identify (it was a laser cannon), I should've found a way to make it seem like it was shooting you. Problem is I really don't know how to do all of this. But I'm working it out.

I don't think I had a problem with the storyline or the plot really, I think I did pretty good on that considering how much time I put into it.

And yes, the game was supposed to piss you off, I intentionally did that just to try to make it a little more addicting, and to try to make it a little more tricky and fun. I also did for the sake of just pissing you off (I had some friends try it, they got kinda mad at it.).

I know all of this sounds very pessimistic. But at least I was able to identify what I did wrong and how I can do better, and what I need to keep doing and what I need to stop doing. I'm really glad I did this so I get to know what people really think about how I made this, and not a couple of my friends using sympathetic voices to say "Uhh, yeah, it's pretty good.". Thanks so much for all your input, and see you in a couple of months.