Didn't get as much done today as i had hoped. Sounds still haven't started. I blame my cold. Stupid sinuses. I will set you on fire with curry.

Some more logic got done. The only thing left on the logic side is the "store" -- ability to buy new power sources - fire, solar, etc.

That should leave Thurs and Friday for improving the graphics, adding sounds, and finding bugs. Also multiplayer mode if there's time.

-sjbrown

I know, I'm late getting going. And I don't know much Python or PyGame.
But I will enter! And produce a game! As soon as I can get that little ship sprite to appear... :-/

I was wondering, How many of you will be able to make use of multiplayer features and with what limitations? Can you play something using the same keyboard? Only over the network? All your friends are a mile a way so it has to work over the internet?

This year, TeamXerian has aimed for the stars.

Like fellow competitor Galacticus, we are building a persistent online world, populated by steam powered machinery. We have been inspired by Armadillo Aerospace, our engines run on Ag and H202.

This is a rather daunting task, but we are still optimistic. More soon.

This has some basic stuff done. I've put glut solid cubes and glut wire cubes for the time being. The red cubes are cops. Please find the instructions in ReadMe.txt . You will be shown help while in the game also (inspired from prince of persia) :D http://media.pyweek.org/dl/2/gizmo_thunder/pyweek2.zip

Hi, Richard.. im' behind a proxy server.. and i dont' think the script that is provided on the site handles that. Any suggestions about how i can upload my entry?

Today seemed to be a much slower day. It's probably because instead of writing code from scratch I was tinkering with existing code. That's always tougher for me to do.

I redesigned my pipe sections and in the process I switched from GIMP to KolorPaint which is a much simpler editor and more suited to my task. I've now drawn all the pipes I think I'll need for the final game. In my first post I mentioned I couldn't see how people could work in a team on a short challenge such as this, but I have to admit that having an artist would really help. My programmer art sucks and no matter how good my game is it'll look terrible :-(

Moving on from the looks, I made a few alterations to the game mechanics today. I decided to move away from the traditional Pipe Dreams method of forcing the user's hand when placing pipes by giving them only one pipe type at a time to choose from. I've decided that the user will have access to the whole range of options but each pipe will have a cost that will be deducted from their score if they use it.

Currently the user has the following pipe types to choose from:

• Straight pipes: This is just a simple, straight pipe.
• Corner pipes: These pipes let the steam turn a corner!
• Thin pipes: This pipe is like the straight pipes, only they're thinner so the pressure in the pipe is increased. This forces the steam to move quicker but also the pressure changes are more extreme.
• Reservoirs: These are fat sections of pipes that store a lot of steam. This reduces the pressure and evens out any pressure changes.
• Pressure release valve: This section of pipe will start venting excess steam if the pressure gets too high. This value will become variable but is currently fixed.
• One-way pipe: This pipe prevents steam from 'flowing' in the wrong direction if the pressure gradient changes.

I can already see how some of the pipes can be used in combination. For example a one-way pipe just before a reservoir means that the steam will keep flowing in the right direction even if the boiler gets shut off. Well, for a while longer at least :-) Also a pressure release valve placed just before the goal is handy in keeping pressure below the maximum as going above this will be heavily penalised. The pressure release valves will have to be expensive as this makes things a bit too easy, and running the boiler will cost you as well so running it too much and just venting the excess steam will lower your score.

There are still some other pipes types that need adding, such as an on/off value and crossing pipes. I also need to work on some splitter so the user can send steam in different directions. I'll need to start work tomorrow on the additives that the player will be required to pass the steam through before they'll score any points.

I still have a lot to do, and not much time left to do it in. I get the feeling that I'll be getting up early and spending the whole of Saturday working on bringing my game up to scratch. It's a shame that the competition didn't start 24 hours later - I wouldn't change my weekend away with my girlfriend for the world, but dang, having the whole of Sunday to work on the game would have been useful!

Hi,

here comes our first screenshot (badly damaged by jpeg compression). Not very amazing, huh? We're still waiting for nice gfx from our artist and already have some really good music. maciekl, who's responsible for logic of tracks, switches and semaphores is rather busy, so we won't be seeing those in game till Thursday. In the mean time, I'm working on polishing graphics code and doing some preliminary work on help/tutorial.

Also, I've just realised that 800x600 may be a little too low for our needs, so we may end up using a fixed resolution of 1024x768...

Yes, all logic is almost done and I still don't have any screenshot to show you. Actually I didn't start with graphics or sound yet, because I'm busy making sure the game logic is implemented and tested before doing any graphic stuff.

Today I feel like I've been more productive that yesterday. I finally seem to have finished my model classes and started the controller class, that will be the class controlling the game flow, hence this name.

The game isn't yet very funny... it's just playing itself... alone... but once all model and controller classes are done I'll be pretty quick doing the view class which is the class that will let the player view the game status and make decisions (i.e., the fun).

This was a pretty productive day. The controls are pretty much set, and our little ship consumes fuel and needs to take care of steam pressure. Most of the UI is also in place.