I've disappointed too many people with unfinished games that I made huge promises about. (Also means that Panda3D's given me enough problems that I'm seriously reconsidering it...)

I'd like to apologize for my habit of proclaiming before I should. I'd also like to apologize for my habit of bragging about a game idea and then flaking out. I wanted to redeem myself, and I'm not off to a great start.

I really want to say that I won't brag about things until they've happened, and that I won't make decisions until I have all the information. All I can do here is try, though. (As much of a trope as that is...) I struggle with self-control, and I'll have to work harder to keep myself from jumping the gun about everything.

I'm sorry I've acted the way I have. I'm trying to change, and I'll try harder from here on. Please forgive me.


        --- Akake

I have a screenshot of what I've got so far in Beta Gunner Warcry.
It doesn't have lighting yet, as I've not yet put that in, but it'll have lights soon.
The room doesn't have corner walls yet, either.
And there's no collision yet.

But still! There's a tank in a room!

Since I'm going to be using Panda3D, I've decided to try to actually make something with it before the compo.

I'm going to be revisiting one of my (Rather short-lived) warmup game, though only in a rough way.

Beta Gunner Warcry was a game I set myself to finishing in 2 weeks quite some time ago. Performance issues (Granted, I'm on a netbook) cut that off.

The game was supposed to be a side-scrolling shooter with procedural levels.

I've decided to recycle the idea, but making changes. Instead of a side-scrolling space shooter, it's now a tank shooter. Instead of a side-on view, the camera will be attached behind the turret. (It takes ~2 lines of code to do that in Panda! ^o^) I will be using the fact that having a camera behind you instead of above you limits your field of view to my advantage. My level generator will place plenty of obstacles in levels, which will block your line of sight and often hide baddies.

Levels will still be procedural, though, and I'm still giving myself 2 weeks to finish it. (Since I started yesterday, that means that I have until the 14th, but I'm not holding myself down to minutes or even hours here)

I've currently got a model of a tank body, a model of a tank turret, and have gotten to the point where I had a tank driving around. I would have a screenshot, but I forgot to take one before I broke things to get a data manager and a factory put together.

Panda3D is a dream to use. Simple and easy, great performance, and excellent packaging tools. I think I've found something that makes me happy.

Folks, you can look forward to a Panda3D game from me this PyWeek. I'm not going to specify further until the theme voting begins (As I've no idea until I know what the theme might be), but Panda3D is a guarantee.

        --- Akake

We're getting as much non-content set up in advance as possible.

We've got a bit of planning under our belt at our project wiki, though there's a lot to flesh out still, and a lot to change once we've considered the themes.

It'll be interesting to see how multiple programmers affects our productivity.

We've got a nice blank svn repository.  Last time, I'd say our best quality was our organization; this time we're going to try and keep that organized within our team, but also be more inventive with our game.

We welcome comments from other pyweek teams, and good luck everyone.

Members this time

• Blake O'Hare - our project lead, main designer, engine programmer
• BrettS - Level Designer
• dmcginty23 - May be contributing music
• Falun - Other coding and level design
• fixception - character artist
• ikanreed - Music, SFX, some level design, and menu programming.
• Spears Dracona - background art and SFX