As usual, I'm very worried that I won't have time to finish this. Too much work, too little time.

However, I think this turned out pretty cool for a few hours of work from a non-artist programmer, so I thought I'd share it. I doubt I'll have time to animate this, unfortunately. Just pretend that sparks are coming out of the energy core and the death ray is getting charged. :)

PS: I didn't say hi yet, so hello everyone! Nice to be here once again and I'm looking forward to see your games. :)

Day 5 saw me get massively bogged down in particles for the rockets (and hopefully, other effects too). lepton's BillboardRenderer just wasn't drawing colours right, so after about 3 hours of fiddling with it I reimplemented it crudely with pyglet sprites.



You might also notice a slicker HUD with a list of the components you can use. And fuel gets consumed by things that require fuel. The editor is also looking finished:



All in all, I'm relatively pleased with where I am - that's the game mechanics largely complete.

Not much progress today, compared to the other days. Still, I think I'm not bad in time, should be able to create a few rooms on day 6 and day 7 and have some kind of game ready. The physics could be better, e.g. right now if I pull or push a block and there's another block on top of it... I just slide the lower block out instead of causing the upper block to move as well.

Also, my level editor isn't very easy to use, it's all inline ASCII. Which shows how I like wasting time... either using a simpler ASCII format (to save time), or writing a proper graphical editor (so I save time creating rooms) both would have been better ideas :P
room1 = r"""
                     _
           _       _| |_       _
         _| |    _| |_| |_    | |_
       _| |_|  _| |_|/|_| |_  |_| |_
     _| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_
   _| |_|/|_| |_|/|_/.\_|\|_| |_|\|_| |_
  | |_| |_| |_| |_/ \_/ \_| |_| |_| |_| |
  |_|/|_| |_| |_/.\_/ \_/.\_|\|_| |_|\|_|
  | |_| |_| |_/ \_/ \_/ \_/ \_| |_| |_| |
  |_| |_|/|_/.\_/ \_/.\_/ \_/.\_|\|_| |_|
  | |_| |_/ \_/ \_/ \_/S\_/ \♥/ \_| |_| |
  |_|/|_/.\_/ \_/.\_/ \_/.\_/♥\_/.\_|\|_|
  | |_/ \_/ \_/ \_/ \_/ \_/♥\♥/♥\_/ \_| |
  |_/.\_/ \_/.\_/ \_/.\_/♥\_/.\_/♥\_/.\_|
  / \_/ \_/ \_/ \_/ \_/ \♥/♥\_/ \♥/ \_/ \
  \_/ \_/.\_/ \_/ \_/ \_/.\_/♥\_/.\_/ \_/
    \_/ \_/ \_/ \_/ \_/ \_/♥\_/ \_/ \_/
      \_/ \_/.\_/ \_/.\_/ \_/.\_/ \_/
        \_/ \_/ \_/ \_/ \_/ \_/ \_/
          \_/ \_/.\_/ \_/_\_/ \_/
            \_/ \_/ \_/ \_/ \_/
              \_/ \_/.\_/ \_/
                \_/ \_/ \_/
                  \_/ \_/
                    \_/
"""

I have added enemies. I need to slow every movement and reduce enemy generation rate.

Currently gameplay and game feel sucks... But I believe I can fix it (at least a little bit) just with reducing speed. I think It could introduce some tactical gameplay aspect.

I will try to test this hypothesis tomorrow, because tonight my eyes are closing down as I write this.

Video WIP: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLZ6kkB5qPQ

Some improvements were made on missions today but we are pretty behind on art. Hopefully we can get a whole bunch of icons done tonight. I am the lucky team member nominated for art - if the game art is terrible, blame it on me. Only 2 days to go! The pressure is kicking in a bit now...

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.

The alpha gameplay seems to be good, we have so much work to do, but now all the pieces were assembled. Story, dialogs and assets are our last step... 

After sleeping on it, I've decided to gracefully retreat from the challenge. I could spend the remaining time either attempting to wrangle features essential to actually make my game a game, like enemy AI, into my spaghetti code or I could spend it on putting an usable GUI over top. I don't want that to be an "or" choice, especially when I'm tempted to just toss the current code out and redesign it from scratch.

In a sense, this is because I actually like the idea I had enough that I really don't want to rush out a terrible implementation of it to meet the time limit, so consider goal 5 accomplished. I'd like to thank everyone involved in running pyweek for the inspiration.

I commend those who are sticking it through, unlike me, and look forward to trying the other entries (if I'm allowed to after backing out.)

Day 3 and 4 have been progressively slow. So far the games battle system works fine and I have got abilities working correctly along with buffs. The rest of Day 4 will be used to add a debuff class and make it usable in game. If finished soon enough, I will start with the genetic system and attempt to start balancing the abilities and allow for upgrades/learning new abilities.

Today I wrote some code and screen image. What I am making is: Genre: Management Simulation Idea: Invent & develop something weird with odd scientists. Concept: Make simulation game more active and vivid powered by pygame. I'll do my best on Saturday and at least make a playable demo.