Due to an unfortunate last-minute implementation of the highscore, a killer "bug" is in the final entry.
Rate us any way you please having this in mind (you'll only be able to play the game for ten seconds), but our game is worth trying just for the fun of it. :)
To quick-fix it, open up main.py, find row 138, and edit this line:
endTime = startTime + 10 * 1000 #(s * 1000 = ms)
to this:
endTime = startTime + 90 * 1000 #(s * 1000 = ms)


If you want to try the latest version, with a functional highscore (fully implemented three minutes past deadline!!), get it from here:
http://srekel.net/files/files/Steam%20Empire.zip

On the behalf of my team, I'm really sorry for these issues. As I said, try the full game, but rate us as if you had only played the first version if you want to.

Whew. Made it in time, but only barely. Hopefully there weren't any show stopping bugs left. The packaging was done in an extreme hurry, so I'm a bit worried. :)

So many things were left undone (again). My biggest regret is that I didn't have time to add any sound effects to the game.

Notice
Being in a hurry, I forgot to remove the save file from my last testing round, so you can remove the save.dat to erase my scores.

Requirements

• Python 2.4
• Pygame
• PyOpenGL
• psyco (well, not required, but helps a lot)

I didn't have time to optimize much, so it'll probably take a newish video card to run smoothly.

How to Play
You can change the game to windowed/fullscreen and edit the keys from the steamer.ini file. There is no README included (didn't have time to write one), but there is a tutorial level that explains the controls. I'll paste the hints here too:

• Press ESC to exit the tutorial (or quit any other level)
• Left arrow controls the left thruster and right arrow the right thruster
• Push both thrusters at once to take off and fly straight
• Gravity will turn the nose of craft down so keep it balanced
• The amount of pressure affects your thrust and turning rate
• Press the left shift to quickly burn fuel into more pressure
• Overburn is less economic than normal fuel consumption
• Press and hold the space bar for an air brake
• Using the brake drains your pressure, so be conservative
• The brake is especially handy for landing
• In order to land, the ship has to be upright and moving slowly
• Up arrow fires the cannon, but be careful of the recoil
• Use the air brake when firing the cannon for more accuracy
• The aim of the real levels is to land on the second pad
• The less fuel and time you use, the higher you will score
• Shooting blimps and especially cannons gives you a bonus

http://stim.game-host.org:8080/

The game is finally finished and PyWeek is over. I didn't get around to posting much screenshots near the end of the week, but we managed to do some very nice additions to the game.
The graphics are largely redone, the game has a main menu, high scores, and two different game modes: "Story mode" and "Endless mode" with separate high scores for both. Endless mode is actually closer to what the earlier version were. It's basically more and more enemies coming at you, but now with different "phases" that have different balance between the different kinds of enemies and also different "weather conditions" meaning that the waves get taller or shorter.
Story mode actually has an end unlike the Endless mode (hence the name "endless"). You'll go through five phases similar to the ones in endless mode, this time with progressive difficulty, and in the sixth phase you'll face the final boss.
We had a great time making this game, and we hope you have equally good time playing it!

Download Trip on the Funny Boat -- final PyWeek version.

Ugh. I was very desperate those last few minutes. If the challenge had ended 23:59, I wouldn't have been able to send my "final" version.

Anyway, it turned out I managed to create something. My code is extremely messy, so no one look at it. :) I accidentally zipped a .bak into it, too. I rushed through these last 11 hours to finish something. It has no intro, no sounds, the game starts right away, I haven't even tested it past the first level, but at least I'm happy I sent something.

To be honest, due to the rushing, I didn't have time to look at the license, so I kinda choose it at random. If there's anything wrong with the license, let me know.

I'll post a description and a screenshot of it later. Right now I'm hungry and I need dinner.

Go check it out. I'm looking forward to playing your games, too. Although my game didn't turn out as I expected and it'll probably be rated low, this was great. Thanks for the competition.

Well we're waiting for out entry to maybe be uploaded, I put it on my website. You can download it from http://www.wardtek.ca/steamrollers.zip

SHA1 Hash:
0dd685816bf2b1bd9f1f571a18470b96d5662a33

Hope to have an exe and a mac .app built soon.

Uploaded with less than a minute left! I thought I had everything worked out, and today would be mostly polishing, but in true PyWeek style, it turned out that there was a lot more to do than I thought, and the whole thing didn't come together until the last minute - literally.

The game does have sound, music & high scores, but has other rough edges: few levels, no pause facility, very bare appearance (black background, plain menus, etc.), few levels... it is, however, playable. Up to level 3, at least - I've actually played levels 4 or 5 myself yet.

I am slightly annoyed that PyGame doesn't seem to obey loop commands in MOD music - the background music for my game doesn't loop correctly at all, but it's a long enough loop that you don't really notice the join (or lack thereof) when playing. Anyone know if this can be fixed?

I'm fully expecting a bug report or two - for example, I have a feeling that if a train were to do down/right directly in front of a building or tree, the train may become partially obscured by it; however, I never got time to create a test case for this, so I have absolutely no idea if it's true or not. Such is life.

I'd like to thank my job and my girlfriend for taking up so much of my time, and Richard for not taking me up on my suggestion of allocating two full weekends for the challenge - without you, I might have been relaxing a few hours ago ;)

In the end, I lost on the most fundamental thing, gameplay. I needed to spend more time tweaking how the trains collided and pulled on each other, in order to prevent what happened: springs between cars would just amp up until monstrous forces would knock them all apart at well over 1000m/s.. d'oh

I did take time off today to tweak the environment and make it pretty, at least I am happy with that. And I did make everything from scratch: music (with garageband), graphics (with inkscape).. except the physics, which was the best and the worst part; I was greatly helped by a co-worker who found the problem interesting.

I hope those who judge will see some good in where I was trying to go.. but admittedly a game is not finished unless it can at least be successfully played.. ah well a lot of fun today though. Hacking under duress is by far the best way :)

I'm (hopefully) uploading my final submission now, with 7 minutes to go according to the main page... A py2exe'd version will follow.

As I didn't have time to dig up an appropriate licence, and I doubt anyone would be mad enough to want to crib a beginner's code, I'm considering this software to be Public Domain. Maybe it'll come in handy for teaching people how not to code well ;)

Anyway, I'd just like to say, this has been a blast! Many thanks to Richard for running a great contest, and I'm looking forward to playing everyone's games! Good luck!

"20,000 Light Years Into Space" is now finished. It is a steampunk-themed single player real-time strategy game, and now includes an interactive tutorial (hastily added at the last minute). Get it from the Pyweek website or http://www.jwhitham.org.uk/biscuit_games/LightYears/.

Thanks to everyone involved in Pyweek, particularly the Pyweek organisers, and thankyou also to my long-suffering testers. I'm looking forward to playing the other games.