Moon class is now done and it does what I hoped it would do. ^^
Made some images as well with a transparent background, and luckily, they worked seamlessly with the display. Although they probably look real ugly to everyone else. ahseuhausehuasheuahseuhausehause

Day 2 was not very productive. I've scene with moon and one mushroom just flying up. And that is it. I hope tomorrow I will be able to code something more significant.

Should not have stayed up so late the day before. But at least I have now basic collision detection against the trees in the forest.

Well, I have a silly little astronaut moonwalking, but I'm still not sure what the game will be about :)

Iv hashed out something I think will handle all of the games likely directions. It almost feels like Ive spent too much time working on the architectural details but at least itll be far cleaner than my last attempt which was the messiest python code Iv ever seen.

Orbits are working well, I have the concept of planets and manoeuvrable ships and collisions are sorted. Getting planet labels in were the final straw for me today -they slowly creep off the screen and into infinity -Ill take care of that one tommorow.

In case I don't get 'round to it later here is progress for day 2

Got a mostly working first level for the game, trying to think of what to do with level 2
Came up with an idea for level 2... started it :) it's some sort of cross betweet dig dug and pacman
It's progressing nicely, but having a bit of a problem with fps due to excessive sprites
Todo:
Scoring in level one is wrong :p
Thinking I should *actually* draw some moon for the landing pad to sit on...
Make proper backgrounds
Make proper graphics
Sounds for in game events (but it's in space - you can't actually hear explosions!)
Maybe sounds for button presses in menus
Make background stars varying sizes or at least smaller!

So the second day we actually made great progress. The day began very early, I went to donate blood along with a friend of mine, who was to become our chief graphics designer (I need to put him in the team once he registers). I showed him our concepts, and here he came with first amazing graphics:




Today me and wary spent whole day coding, and used some linear algebra and physics, as we tried to make realistic gravity and movement on planets (moons). I must say I was surprised by the fun of jumping around the planets itself.

The trickies part was the controls. Since when you're heads down it's pretty hard to hit the correct arrows (that are opposite of the direction), I decided to change the behavior of the keys depending on the angle player has against the closest planet. The resulting code of the function was a big mess, but the desired behavior is reached, so I forget about the function now and will never look back at it :)

Here we are, at the end of the second day and far away from anything playable :)

I'm starting to think that going 3D was a terrible idea, but well... it's too soon to say it is impossible, isn't it?



First the good stuff: tiled layers work (floor and walls are by now in the GB layer, the doors are in the FG layer). I managed to draw some textures (although I can see some glitches here and there; I'll look at them later) and started working on the switches; until I found my first problem. Something seems to be wrong in the way the model is loading and I don't know why :(

I'm tired and I need some rest for tomorrow; so I'll leave it here for now. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to get the switches right and start modelling some objects before starting with the character.

EDIT: found the problem with the switches: the texture had the wrong size. I though it was smart to use a 128x128 texture for a such small model (Wings3D renders it OK!), but oh mysteries of OpenGL... it doesn't work in my program :) - back to 256x256 for the win!

In a normal PyWeek, I get a good few hours to code on the first day and squeeze what I can out of other days. Not this time! Only had limited time to kick things off but I think I may still get there.

I wanted my game to feature exploration and so had the idea of a habitable moon where the player is exploring and surviving. I was looking at the feature film Moon and the game Harvest Moon (Gamecube). Story may be you a clone rejected by society living on a moon. No ideas for monsters/competitors yet. Fruit picking may be involved too.

So I have objects planned out and an idea for graphics. Moon generation was a high priority so that has been most of the work so far.Screenshot below of the map viewer. Calling it a night due to health but feeling positive about the game. Main win was getting the moons to generate fast. Original code took forever...

Rather accidently it reminds me of the 8 bit game 'Ring of Darkness'. :-)

Well an idea suddenly hit me. It was like my brain was unlocked from whatever forces go to work when we are sleeping. Hoorah!

The game is a combination of existing game styles, interweaved as level phases: falling block like puzzle with missile command like action.

The story is that you control construction of moon bases. By playing through the phases that make up each level, you have to combine calcium deposits and water extracted from the lunar surface to prefab mooncrete slabs, which lay a foundation for constructing radar dishes and rocket turrets. Finally when you are set up you must defend your base from incoming meteor showers! If you survive, you may move on to build the next moon base.

Now I have some catching up to do.

I took some snaps of the pages I drew up.


Good luck to all! :]