its lunch-time, just got home, got a bit of a hangover (nothing western medicine can't cure). the theme I was hoping for won - juhu!

Today I won't to come up with some gameplay-mechanics and maybe start trying those out in the later evening. Right now I think it'll have something to do with plattforms, where you have to get up as far as possible while avoiding... hm... we'll see...

Did basic rope "physics"... doesn't feel to bad, this is already fun to play around with

Later I'll add shooting (that's what I reserved LMB for :-), so you get recoil and maybe add some monsters so shooting makes sense.

Things I'm pondering

• destroyable obstacles (shoot the obstacle your opponent is on...hehe)
• multiplayer - i like soldat, this could be a clone with grapple-hooks
• make level bigger then screen - or not?

spent most of the day adding graphics, animations and stuff that makes the game nicer to look at... this paid off:-)

tomorrow i'll add vertical-scrolling... you should always be forced to move up, because the plattforms at the bottom explode.

It's not optimized at all. by hitting ENTER you start a new level, making the game as-fast-as-currently-possible again

things i'd like to include tomorrow:

• the up-scrolling (top priority)
• better rope-swing-physics
• health bar + timer... so the toy hopefully becomes a game

spent this day making a game out of the toy. try it, if you dare :-) plan for tomorrow:

• one stronger enemy
• spread gun
• ... menu already?

I tried making an exe, but got this strange error... has it to do with the skellington or did I do smth wrong?

C:\simono-0.4\dist>run_game.exe
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "run_game.py", line 3, in ?
NameError: name '__file__' is not defined

so it's already grinding to an halt in run_game?? other people of succesfully provided exe... so what's my mistake?

Im amazed, that I always accomplished the things I scheduled the day before :-) you can see it in the screens + diary entries.

That of course doesn't mean I'm taking a break. I thought I would be finished with implementing all game mechanics by now, but two more must-have things came to mind:

• level editor + save/stream (Top priority. The auto-generated levels are okay, but to really show of the game I need to tweak the levels)
• one more enemy. A spider that moves "on rails" around the screen and uses the third weapon, a machine-gun.

Also, the list of "small fixes" is growing and growing... a cross-hair, different death-sounds, nicer hud, finish-menu,...

I'm finally content with the features I have. The following days are reserved for game-tweaking, level creation and possibly some optimizations

I'm sorry for the hard level that comes with the current version, but hey: the editor is working, so you can erase some enemies or whatever

top priority now:

• rope physics must be rock solid
• level creation
• speed optimizing (I found the strangest loops in my code... you won't believe it)

I'm tempted to implement an online-highscore to encourage global competition... but we'll see.

did my first final submission. juhu! Now I'm off play-testing with friends and hopefully creating some awsome levels

I'll upload a py2exe version soon, if everything goes as planned...

GORY, BLOOD AND SLUG

I finished my gory shoot-them-up plattform game and it got ropes too!! I've been playing it the whole afternoon with a couple of friends, blasting away those evil scientists.

It's slow. If you have less then 1Ghz, it will be really sluggish... in that case try turning off the music + playing fullscreen. I recommend 2 Ghz and fullmoon for total pleasure.

It's got this really easy to use level editor, and I've already got sent a lot of nice levels - will probably setup a level-exchange page sometime next week. Of course a tutorial is included too, that will make you familiar with the gameplay basics. But I for one enjoy the Endless Wall most...that's I can show off my l33t rope swinging acrobatics (of course playing in ultra-violent mode)

THE OTHERS

I'm amazed what all the other teams/coders put together in one week. I'm looking forward to every single final version and will definitly enjoy testing those. I think it's too early to pick favorites, but especially the ones with totally new gameplay mechanics impressed me the most. Great job everyone!

THANKS

So thanks for all the fish, es war mir ein Volksfest. Great organization and motivation by the pyweek-team (I think richard is the main man behind all this?) and see you again later this year....

thanks for all the constructive comments. some general comments on the main critique points:

The good

• gore - blood particles, die sounds and such. some liked it, some hated it - controversy is a good thing in my book. I spent quite some time getting the sounds right. A gun needs to sound like one *ratatata* and when I kill a bad guy I want to get feedback (particles+die sound)
• level pacing - I made the random level generator first, which explains why it works so good; added custom-made levels (+editor) on the last days (levels are just a serialized list and the editor is a hacked - COPIED - game engine). I wanted to make more levels and a real story, but didn't have enough time. This is more important, I realize now - presenting the game content in a considered way makes everything look more professional then just dumping everything at the user in a random fashion
• different enemies, pickups - where top priority. lot's of content makes the game more varied. I sort of succeded

The bad

• rope + collision physics - made those on the first few days, improved them only a little bit. The thing is: they work, if you have a strong machine (2ghz ++). The "bottom goes into screen" effect takes a lot of CPU - don't do dangerous rope-jumps during this phase and you should be fine (would be my excuse). I won't optimize... time will solve that problem for me.

The ugly

• menu - there isn't much to do in the menu, so I just made it one screen. Worked okay, some even mentioned it as nice :-) made it in inkscape and spent some time tweaking it
• graphics - some found them okay, some hated them. I never aimed for better graphics. I can't draw and already spent more then one day collecting fitting sprites. Found it more important to add more enemies/items then improve the existing ones.

Things I would feel like working on, not sure if I will:

• even more enemies. I'd love to have 20+ with different behaviour and boss enemies.
• better + more levels (20 or even more) with a story
• rope physics. the way the rope behaves is strange at least, but somehwat consistent. I don't know what to do about it, but I should investigate how worms and other games handle them.

I'm really rather content with how the game came out. I see that A LOT OF people had trouble with the collision physics, but that's a performance issue not "bad physics" per se (one could argue wether this is not the same thing). I should have slowed down the game if the machine is to weak.

Final note: take a look at my source code. It's UGLY AS HELL. this is alright for a one-week-shot project. I don't want to sound like a preacher, but do-the-simplest-thing-that-can-possible-work is a good thing. If something doesn't add to the gameplay-value (ie refactoring, nice structure).. forget it.