First day is gone and nothing has been written. And we hadn't time to meet and talk about the game yet.
Just a copule of mails with rough ideas. Hope to find the good one by today.
At least, not having anything to code yet, I have time to write this diary entry.

It is daunting to embark on creating a game in a short time. There are so many details which need to be settled on, even before you worry about all the bugs you might have introduced during coding.

We started brainstorming as soon as the themes were announced, so I had a bit of a leg up on what we were going to do when the final one was announced.

Most of Sunday was spent refining the ambitious design back towards something we can make in a week. I think I've managed that fairly well, but there are still some areas which need finalizing (like details of the core mechanics). Hopefully I can get through the rest of that today - I'd hoped to be done this morning.

This is my first time, and I'm finding that it is hard to stay focused and fresh. At work we wouldn't have such a fixed deadline hovering over everything.


It is fascinating to see what others have achieved already. I can't wait to see what everyone creates!

I found a writer and an artist. We got a concept that could have worked.

But I just didn't have the morale to make it through the week, so this game shall not be.

Ah well. Next time!

I've been thinking a lot about the upcoming game. I have a little code, absolutely no graphics, but a pretty solid idea.

Okay, here goes: I want to make a game about flying to the moon.
And the rest will be purposefully left out for you to wonder and debate about.

We've made excellent progress today after a late start. Though we had brainstormed we hadn't really decided on a game idea beforehand this time so it was 12 hours into the contest before we finally had something workable.

Having been ambitious in the last couple of Pyweeks we decided to change strategy and pick a much simpler game idea this time around, something that will let us get a good solid game under our belts early on and leave plenty of time for tweaking and making it fun.

This seems to have worked well because progress has been rapid today. We quickly knocked up some basic asteroids-style graphics and physics:



I spent a while working on a tractor beam, which behaves like a damped spring:



Meanwhile Arnav worked on bullets, and ejecting the loot from the asteroids:



I'm missing the final day of the competition for a wedding, so it feels great that we're well ahead of schedule so early on.

Exciting - game theme chosen! Let's get started!

• I decided to do a series of 'mini games' so I can complete each one and make as many more as time permits
• Made an empty 'skeleton' game with placeholders for title screen, info screen, winning screen, losing screen, a death screen
• Level 1 - land a lunar module on the moon
• Spent longer on the random stars than I should have... especially as according to the NASA photos you can't see stars on the moon...

Todo:

• Make proper backgrounds
• Maybe sounds for button presses in menus
• Make background stars varying sizes or at least smaller!

Unfortunately, the greatest Moon-based game possible has already been created. I only hope that the perfection that is Moons Galore! can give us all some inspiration:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkpqqPR83Ts

We appear to have gotten off to a reasonably smooth start. Given the Moon theme the team seemed to automatically gravitate towards science fiction themes and after much discussion we agreed on doing some sort of top-down puzzle action game with maybe light combat. To tie in the theme further, we made the protagonist a werewolf.



Having learned previously that physics engines are hard, we opted to use a physics engine library this time. After an extensive selection process (i.e. we found it first) we decided to use pymunk. Jerith attempted to convince us again that writing a physics engine wasn't actually that hard, but fortunately the memory of Nine Tales was still fresh in everyone's minds.

Having selected a vague genre, storyline and tool set, we got to work and ended the day with:

• a play area with bounding walls
• a protagonist that can change between human and werewolf forms
• the beginnings of a level editor
• the ability to change between game and menu screens
• a pressure sensitive switch on the floor
• reasonable first draft of player movement controls
• some code for loading resources
• artwork for the protagonist and a few aliens

The first day is gone and I still don't know what game I'll make.

I started by collecting several different ideas, and then deciding on prototyping one of them - a gravitational game - but I didn't really like the results (plus, I suddenly remembered I had already played a game quite similar to what I was planning), so I put it on hold.

I began prototyping the second idea, and I hope this one will work out better.

I will probably ganna call my game: "Logical mushroom hunting on the Moon" or something.

Ok. Theme seems perfect for me. I am very very good with round things and simple geometric figures. And moon is round. But instead of doing some game with simple geometric figures and strange gameplay (as I always do), I am in the mood of doing something completely idiotic. Something that does not makes sense.

I am from Lithuania. There is quite popular to go gathering mushrooms. And there is old wisdom (or superstitious thinking) not to go picking mushroom under the full moon, because mushrooms will be wormy. So that is where my idea came from.

Concept art:



I am programmer and I am not artist, but still I am not happy with it. I think the moon has too many details. And I am particularly not happy with the astronaut and it's gun. I am thinking about repainting him. But for now it will do, because this is gamejam and time is everything. Anyway, game mechanics (just concept -- nothing is implemented yet):

- Player controls astronaut with keys (LEFT, RIGHT or A, D) and with mouse.
- Astronaut can walk around the moon
- By walking through the mushroom he release it free
- Mushroom strarts flying into the cosmos.
- Player must shoot mushroom with shotgun.
- There will be blood for some reasons and/or for some actions I have not decided yet. It does not make sense, but there will be blood.
- I am not thinking about wining/losing conditions. First, I will try to implement this simple mechanic and then I will see.

P.S. Some inspiration has been taken from (http://www.ridiculousfishing.com/).