Coding has commenced. Some drama still going on but the game is evolving and getting structured. Writing diary entries while waiting for some code to be written by co-worker...

So "Mutate" that's it!

After some brainstorming, me and my dry central nervous system came up with this awesome idea called... *dramatic pause*  UNNATURAL SELECTION *orchestral hit*

It's the year 4712, typical post-apocaliptic scenario: alien invasion, broken things, humans at the edge of extinction and stuff. Mankind's last hope is a genetically engineered clone of Charles fuck**g Darwin who is ripped as f**k and carries a shotgun in order to kill those alien guys.

They came from outer space and live/love/reproduce underground. BUT, they come to the surface to eat McDonald's chips: the only kind of food that has managed to survive 34 nuclear holocausts.

These extraterrestrial dudes have an extremely unstable genetic structure, so they mutate ( heh, got it? ) very easily. Only the fittest shall survive! The role of our protagonist is to select ( and by select I mean shot them in the face ) those most/less fit individuals, score points, and generally be awesome.

So summarizing, this game is some kind of genetic algorithm where the fitness function is Charles Darwin with a shotgun.

Features:

* Charles Darwin.
* Swarm of aliens that mutate, mimicking the process of natural selection in evolution. I'll try to use ragdoll physics for these guys, as well as some kind of procedural generation.

And finally, a WIP screenshot of the main character!

I decided that instead of doing a traditional tower defense game where the player builds the towers and the monsters evolve to survive, it would be more fitting with the theme, and perhaps more fun, to flip the roles and let the player be on the monster's side with the decision of how to mutate them best for survival. This is a bit similar to Villainous (http://www.kongregate.com/games/Rete/villainous) but hopefully more fun (if a thousand times uglier).

Other thoughts:
Make the player be able to lose. More precisely, don't let the player redistribute mutations eventually leading to the possibility of him not being able to beat a level. From a player perspective that sounds terrible, so who knows.

Also an odd bug/problem I just ran into. Ran my program this morning and was getting 8 fps on the title screen, down from the 800+ the night before. Turns out silverlight (netflix) was somehow doing something to... idk what, can't be opengl or python, so idk, but killing it fixed the problem. Odd.

Chance of completion: 0.4%

 

In my previous post, I mentioned hearing Mel Chuna talk at Linuxfest about gamification, and that the four components of a game are goal, rules, feedback, and voluntary participation.

After brainstorming with my family, we came up with a lot of ideas.  Biology-related, something with genetic algorithms, aliens, evolution, etc.  The ideas were rolling around in my head as I was falling asleep when I started to think about aliens.

Being a father of a 13 and 14 year old, I thought about what alien mothers and fathers might think about.  And where alien children in school might go on field trips.  And what advanced aliens might do with all that technology available to them.

So my thought for my game goal is this: you are an alien parent whose alien children went on a social studies field trip to study the primative life on Earth when the school-bus alien spaceship malfunctioned and crashed.  Thankfully all the children are ok, but they have been scattered around and your job is to successfully retrieve them.

The "collect stranded survivors" theme has been used successfully in a number of older video games, like Choplifter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choplifter), Defender (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defender_(video_game)), and Robotron (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotron:_2084).  Its also a theme in many newer games as well, but I'm thinking specifically of games that could be similar in capability for a Pyweek challenge.

As for how to incorporate the Mutate! theme, I'm thinking that the aliens are so advanced that they have no concept of killing or lethal weapons.  If fact, the only tool available to you, the alien parent, is a mutator ray.  So now, how to make a fun, playable game with good rules and feedback and mechanics out of that?  Stay tuned...

Well, here in the midwest U.S. it was 8pm Saturday when the current challenge started.  I hadn't really done any thinking about the themes, save for one idea I had when I saw "Mysterious Stranger".  But I let my mind wander over the "Mutate!" theme, and talked to my kids and wife about what they thought when they heard that word.

Yesterday, I attended the Ohio Linux Fest and heard a great talk by by Mel Chuna called "Level-up...turn your life into a data-driven video game with FOSS".  In it, she noted that games required four things: a goal, rules, feedback, and voluntary participation.  As I drifted off to sleep late night I came up with the goal, tossed it around a little, and think it will work.

For the rules, and feedback, I'm thinking back to some of the 1980's games I used to play, thinking about their mechanics and making sure that it's something I think I can do in a week.  It's really cool when you think about it that the games I played in the arcade as a kids, are games you can reasonably make in a week (save some polish).  We've come a long way baby!

So today I'm working on rules and feedback, and how best to integrate the theme.  Being a verb, "Mutate!" seems like it would be best incorporated in the rules or other mechanics, rather than the goal or story framework.  I'll work on some sketches of the game, and do a little coding.  The key I've found to a successful software project is enough planning to stay out of the weeds when programming, but not too much planning that you can't innovate as you go.  Also, having quick iterations is important... having something that works and advances the program is key.

Stay tuned!

It's the first day here in the EDT time zone. Time to get moving.

I will accomplish the folllowing for sure:

• Get a thing moving on the screen
• Get some preliminary character art for the creature
• Get some very minimal work done on my terrain tileset

I would love to accomplish:

• Get the player character moving with platformer movement
• Get a test world together
• Get the world generator to make the "test" world

Forward, onward, and upward. Get ready...

Nobody blink...

TRIUMPH!! OR! DIE!!!

--- Akake

After some brainstorming we have a basic game idea. It'll be a variation of an adventure game called "Gregor Samsa". Initial lines of code were created with a lot of drama in between. Team management is needed.

Right, after a lot of procrastination, I have the beginnings of my mutating maze:


Next step is to add things like pickups, enemies, title screen, a score, sounds and somethng more interesting for the mutation mechanic.  Currently you can move the semitransparent square around with the mouse. Each maze mutation will always create a perfect maze but maybe I need to change that to make it more interesting.

I decided to use pygame since it seems to be the most compatible and I am probably going to have very simple graphics.  I like the idea of restricting colours to just the EGA palette but we'll see if that gets boring or not.

Hell, we got up today on 2 pm CET and we totally hangovered from yesterday.
I guess we shouldn't drink that Absinth mixed with beer and wine. 

Mutate, gosh my ass. I'll mutate today the toilet. 

Composed some music, wrote as much code as I could without actually writing anything, and tried desperately to think of an innovative game. I'm now hesitant to fulfill my original game idea since so many other people are making variations on it. So I've given myself the rest of today to think of a new idea. If I don't have any good ones by the end of today, back to bugs it is!