'Mad Science' was one of my preferred themes for PyWeek this time around. Last time I did an action game in a one screen area. This time I wanted a big space to explore. I was thinking an RPG/adventure but leant over towards more of an action game.

So the story is a plan to environmentally enhance polluted land goes wrong when a rogue researcher uses an accelarent to speed things up. This mad science leads to a valley creeping with strange new life and you are right in the middle of it. Your only hope is to find the missing components of the device and try and stabalise the situation.

First technical decision was over GFX - I decided to avoid paint packages and go down the generative route using primitives. I wanted the world to be any size (so user can have short or long games). I also wanted to work in any resolution (640by480 + 800by600 so far) and possibly be converted to JS/HTML5. Spent some time looking at sound - will add nearer the end of the week as otherwise they will drive me crazy :-)

Anyway some screen shots. Trees and plants are important to this game. Boxes here are more about defining boundaries for now but there is a playable area to 'walk' around:


 

Wanted to compare all my colours at once so created a colour chart:



Code is pretty good so far - well organised compared to last time and a decent framework for adding new things. Early night tonight for some sleep. Time management going fine - fitted in family, dog, church, garden and even some TV.

Glanced over a few of the other diaries - look very ambitious compare to my simple game. Want to get a plan together for the week and a TODO list. Keep at it everyone :-) !!

A good day today but with much of the code being done early on, I felt I should have got more done tonight. Have to remind myself I did get a good few hours in. There's now a viewable map, grit and a nice feeling of going somewhere when trees appear from the distance and get bigger as you approach.

Tomorrow I want to focus on game elements - namely finding the 5 lost components. Bad guys will be the day after that. Have to resist making visual tweaks. It is starting to feel like a little world to explore but has some distance to go. I asked my boys for suggestions and they came up with rocks - not sure how I am going to create those shapes!!

Tonight's screen-shots showing the fractal trees at different times of day:

Okay - starting to panic a bit now as we head towards halfway. Today was always going to be the worst day for getting code written. Spent my lunch doing a mind map of remaining tasks. Then I had to go buy a bike before getting coding late evening. Still I got some text messages working, components on the map (see grey box in screenshot!). Also made the map hide unvisited areas and optimised the world creation code. Maybe not too bad a night for progress.

Wrote on plan 'Keep it simple and complete'. Would be nice to spend more time on palettes and light shading but alas priorities are aligned elsewhere. Tomorrow we meet the bad guys!

Oh I've won an award already :-) Thanks.

Little bit of a break today due to tiredness. 1.5 more days at work then the final dash for this PyWeek. However I have got some smaller stuff done. Bad guys are now present and even move on screen (well wobble a bit), they are designed on paper, there's an exciting Please Wait screen, F11 now toggles FullScreen/Windowed and I reworked the Map so it scales and looks much better (see below).

Finally I tried running at full resolution on my laptop - delighted to see everything scale well. Time to sleep!

Bah horrible cold otherwise would have got more done :-( Still confident for a decent finish on Saturday. Think +ve. 

Red Meanies was a 3D game on the old 8bit Dragon 32 and was a favourite of mine. So I thought I would honour them in this game. They need eyes and I would like to add a bat variant at night. They do move a little tho combat will be about reactions. Bit of work rewriting screen updates - back on a timer event. Lastly, added lasers - just a light show. No meanies were hurt in the making of this game... yet.

Looking back over the diary, it is good to see progress in this game. Tonight the bad guys have eyes and we have the on-screen compass and health bar. Behind the scenes, Game states for Title screen and game over have been worked out, combat is in - you can hurt them and they can hurt you! A way to track the bad guys health would be good.

For the final day, the mission for collection components needs finished off. Some form of on screen progress too. After that scoring, game stats and sound. 

Any extra time will be spent on world tweaks such as sky, backdrops, palettes etc.

Goodnight and good luck to those still coding into the small hours :-)

What over already? :-) Well, it's been a blast. A full post-mortem will done later. Today was a sunny Scottish day so I was outside into the evening cutting well into my time. Some 'nice to haves' didn't make it. Will upload tomorrow when more awake :-) All the best to those coding up until the deadline.