Yesterday was terrible, I didn't actually get anything done at all. Today I finished most of the pertinent mechanics, I can open various windows, start a new game and the game can be completed now. So now it's just a matter of setting up loads of different challenges and obstacles to over come. I need to decide if I want to make increase the resolution or just go with how it is now. And hopefully I can be be working on the art assets on Friday or Saturday morning.

So 96 hours have passed since the start of the week, and there's 72 more to go.

The main tasks that we got done are creating the level select screen, the first story scene (which is really just a slideshow :p), and the menu popup that appears when the player pauses the game, beats the level, or fails the level. There's also a lot more sounds added to the game. One major feature that still needs to be implemented is saving the user's progress. There's still more story scenes to put in, we need to add more levels, put in some music, the main menu doesn't really work, and a lot of other optional but nice-to-have things, but the finished product is slowly starting to take shape.

Also, it's a bit of a rude awakening to find out that the font being used doesn't have a single quote, or an equals sign, or a percent sign, or a lot of other characters, but we're just going to work around it, I guess.

Anyway, I figured that I should just put the screenshot directly in the diary entry, so here:

Today we added quite a lot again to our game, especially things that make it fun to play, like graphics for the games story and some small Easter eggs. Will you find them all? Some of the Easter eggs will also give you extra points. Aside of that we also keep an eye on little details and bug fixes. We also created a manual PDF with more details about the game and it's back story.
Over the coming days we try to enhance our core gameplay and fix the remaining bugs that we are aware of.

After getting off to a good start on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday were largely a right-off owing to a combination of roleplaying commitments and an early attack of the dreaded pyweek-lurgy. Progress resumed somewhat this evening, although really only at medium steam.

Progress since Sunday includes:

• Lots of work on generating PNG images of roaches from SVG sources.
• An advanced scary Makefile for the above.
• Viewport support for moving around a level.
• Option for viewing the most recently generated map.
• Optimized generation of level background to avoid lots of blitting every frame.
• Funky world state tracking (maybe overly abstracted, but hey).
• Support for layers of actors.
• Image buttons.
• Beginnings of the roach management scene (mostly just buttons at this point).
• Renamed game to Portentosa (rename 1 of N).

Finally, the idea with the graph proved too difficult to make fun to play.

I chose another type of system which exhibits the feature of unpredictible changes as a response to a slight modification : gravitational systems.

The player will be a sort of god -The Undefined- which can throw different types of asteroids in the space. The goal will be as following :

There is a starting situation

A final situation or objective is imposed

The objective has to be obtained by throwing right asteroids at the right moment and to the right place. The aftermath of the cataclysms induced on the celestial bodies targeted may be either disastrous or sucessful from the player point of view.

The physical engine and a few elements of gameplay have been coded. I plan to finish the hard part of the game tomorrow, so that I can spend last days to polish production, find nice songs, etc..

This are moving slowly since i don't have much time during the week and I started on a monday after work :P.

So far i have made a small wrapper around pyglet to smooth over some things i don't like about it, rendered a sprite and a selection box....

The plans for my entry in general is a very basic side 2d scrolling rts style game. So you will have several units which you will give commands probably only Move and Attack since i wont have time for much more. The levels arn't going to be all that complex the main point for this is going to be killing enemies along your path to the end of the level. Enemies will drop loot which you should be able to use to upgrade your army. There will be no buildings or anything and will be totally army based.

Hopefully i can get at least a portion of this idea implemented, i guess we shall see!

We have crafted what we believe is the most versatile symbol for human endeavor: a hallway. This hallway, and its features, incorporate and apply several decades of research on human perspective and as such is drawn as if the player were a god; for attainment of the upper echelon of consciousness is in fact the sum total of all work. Preten, Tious, et al. have also studied the coloration of the human soul and found it green. As mere laypeople I have no vain hope you may understand the significance of what we have here made. It is, quite simply, a lesson, a work, a song for the ages. Thou shalt not covet our beautiful handiwork. The doors of the hallway are doors into your soul. I daresay we panadas have discovered the meaning of life. O hallway! Thy wonder shall never cease! From the cracks in the walls to the chills of the soul thy beauty causes peace! The linoleum floor leading up to the door has an echo which never shall tire For when tried by fire thou art found pure!, pure as the gold of Anound from whither thy stones were hewn. Grant me my wish, a boon for thee, o hallway!

This is not a 3d game, but I'm making some of the assets in Blender. Here's the first one:

I find it is really a big chanllenge for me to make a game in week, yesterday i spent serval hours to draw the pictures...too many ideas I have to give up...finally, i will upload a copycat version ^v^

This even was a long slog in drawing walk cycles for one of our main characters, Rex. Hexagonal isometric tiles were always going to multiply the amount of artwork required, but hopefully having drawn the walk cycles once it will just be a copy-and-paste job to re-use them for our other (human) characters; I can just drop on new torsos. I went for 4-frame walk cycles. Times six directions is 24 sprites:

I haven't actually tested it as an animation sequence yet, so hopefully it won't look too iffy.