I have come to the realization that I'm going about this the wrong way. In my rush to get a working game, I've neglected good code practice. I have no comments and a lot of leftover code that is un-used and un-labeled. My understanding of how the game should turn out has changed a lot since I started but I have been pushing forward trying to make what I have work rather than scratching the majority and starting over.

Since this is more about learning than anything, and since I don't want to start building bad habits early, I'm going to slow down and pretty things up a bit. At least then if I don't finish, maybe I'll have some well-written re-usable patterns/modules for the future.

We had only a vague idea for the Mad Science theme, so we spent the day in finding something more deeper and at the end we found something we like.
We decided to play with colors, probabily having a bad guy threatening the earth.
On the opposite side a wonderful girl trying to save us, of course.

Oh dear Science! It has already started!

We are glad that our first idea to make game about punguins, robots, candies, narwhals (and so on) perfectly fits the "Mad Science" theme.

Now when we have theme and some concepts we arranged first dev meeting. And we are totally tripping balls right niah.

What's the concept?

We are thinking about NMMOAAGDSRPFSG (not-massive-multiplayer-online-at-all-genetic-driven-submerse-role-playing-fighting-shooter-game).

No Kurwa was given so far.

PS.
We are proud of our first award. We hope it won't be the last.
 

'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 :-) !!

I still didn't decide what to make exactly -- although I do have some vague ideas. In the mean time, I'm playing with Tiled and trying to reproduce the visuals similar to those in Portal's tutorials and ads:

Well, some progress. There is an isometric floor. And using my awesome Blender skills I started modeling a mad scientist. So now, 6 days left (only one of which I don't have to work on though).

Woke up at about 7 SAST (5 hours after starting time) this morning to find that the theme is Mad Science - good news, since that was our top choice!

Our game design is hardly innovative - more of a try at a new genre (a new genre for me, that is - the genre's as old as the mountains). We're making a puzzle game inspired by The Castle of Dr Brain, it won't look or sound as pretty as the original, but we'd be pretty happy if we can just manage to crank out 3-5 working mini-games / puzzles in the allotted time.

mARLO has already found a few key pieces of artwork for us to use as well as drawing some of the stuff we'll need later in Inkscape. On my side the intro screen and 1st puzzle are up and running... given that I have to work day & evening jobs in the next 4 days that's probably a bit too slow, but at least there's still Friday night and Saturday, plus I think I have the hang of PGU now...

Here's a screenshot of the 1st puzzle (which still needs a lot of work aesthetically):

 
A higher quality screenshot is available at my website.

Theme is "Mad Science". Dam... Tough one...

I spent half-day trying to think of idea for this challenge. Below is what I have managed to think of. It is going to be RTS.

Main problems:

- I need art. I am doing solo, so I need to paint them myself.
- AI. I need to make computer play RTS against human. I have never done that before.
- Fight field. Should I make it with squares? Should I make it with hexagons? Decisions, decisions. And implementation...
- Time limit. Maybe this is too much for me?


Type

RTS (Similar to Heroes of M&M fighting mode)


Plot

Angry Ninjas and Santa Clauses suddenly came from another dimension. They attacked our planet. These sneaky killers... It must be stopped!

The most respective scientists have been summoned to solve unsolvable puzzle: "How to stop this madness?". After a lot lot calculations only one solutions was proposed.

The only hope for humanity is to construct robotized army of dinosaurs. You will be general who will lead this army to defend our planet. You are our only hope!

This will be my first pyweek entry, as well as my first proper game.

You can download the game and track my progress here: https://github.com/Digitoxin/Daedalus-pyweek

(currently not much, just a test for player movement. The player character doesn't even have a body!)

The game is called Daedalus, and it's about a mad scientist with wings and a jetpack/laser weapon thing and who has to take on his own army of flying minions, the byproduct of the research that went into developing his wings.

In other words, NiGHTS with lasers.

The game will be made using pygame, and I'll be using the resources found in Richard's pygame-tutorial as reference, as seen in this lecture: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duc3jYgAaR0 (The resources are on his bitbucket page)

The current agenda:

Player movement
- Smooth flight system
- Limbs that follow the direction of movement (Possible physics system necessary?)
- Implement Player as a sprite-group, with seperate sprite objects for each limb (currently just the head and body)

Map-loading
- Maps will be made using Tiled and imported using Richard's TMX library, found in the lecture resources
- When this is done, I need to make the viewport follow the player
 
Enemies and AI behaviours
- Stay-still, goto-point and avoid-point for starters, then later shoot-at-point and search-for-point/object/player (line of sight?)

Thank you Richard for the pygame-tutorial resources! I'm relying on them heavily for reference as well as planning on using the TMX library in the game, hopefully this isn't against the rules. I think I'm in the clear since:
- The resources are freely available in the public domain and part of a tutorial
- I'll be doing most of the work myself
- the usage isn't much different from sampling cookbook code
- the TMX library doesn't implement game logic

Was kinda banking on the "Everything Goes to Hell" theme, for a 3D helicopter rescue type game.  But given the "Mad Science" theme I think that would be quite a lame stretch to try to make.

So new idea is a 2D puzzle game with a molecule-matching gameplay mechanic: various molecules are piece types that can be moved around the level (basically a backgrounded/themed 2D board) according to certain movement constraints (either intrinsic to that molecule type, or externally dependent on level geometry and/or other nearby molecules.)  The objective of each level is to clear all molecules from the board within a limited time or number of moves.

The plot is that you are thwarting a mad scientist's evil plans at the chemical reaction level.  Example levels: stopping a nuclear fission reaction in a bomb or sabotaged reactor from going critical, neutralizing a poison/toxin, matter vs antimatter in a particle accelerator, etc