Hello :)

On day three I've been able to add few must-have feature. After collision fix, I've made the enemy shoot missles at the player too. Both player and enemy now have their HP tracked and displayed on the screen. It took me some time to create a text component, propably more than it should but it's there. Next, I'm planning to add a game-over-and-restart message, and make the game actually be restartable. Then maybe some AI, at the moment it's so simple it almost hurts. Before art rework (and adding audio) I also need to make the vessels rotate with the planet, if they are not moving by input/AI.

As a today's final note: I'm starting to think that I may actualy be able to make this work on time ;)

One of today's aims was to end with a bit more of a 'game'. So the player now has a boats (lives) which can be lost and leads to a Game Over screen and a title screen (text for now). The basic black helicopters were added - animation and mine dropping to follow tomorrow. Resisted play with the GFX files too much other than to redesign the rescue boat shape and add the chopper. Hoping to spend time Fri/Sat on audio and graphical polish.

Making a little part of the framework, that's all I did for the third day.
Working at a snail's pace.

The themes were pretty cool this year; I was pretty happy with the outcome ... not my top choice but I had a few ideas lined up. I'm working with the concept of a stealth game in which you can "hack" into and take control of more powerful NPCs (hence you as a player being "behind" everything) and get them to do your biddings in order to complete some pre-defined mission objectives.

I'm going solo this comp, hence down on 2D art skills, so I'm going to try and do something 3D using PyOpenGL, because I'm keen to learn a bit of 3D graphics programming. Hence, I'm also trying to add a bit of a 3D bent to the stealth aspects of the game: what I've got so far is that the player controls a little "hackerbot" that is basically trying to break into a space-based defence installation ... you can drift between asteroids and other space debris, hide behind them and then "hack" into NPCs that come into range.

Day 1: played around alot with PyOpenGL, got some basic functionality for textured models. Day 2: got some basic environment assets started, control system basics mapped out. Day 3: some basic HUD, some basic NPC behaviours, mechanics for "hacking" starting to be fleshed out.

I'm a bit concerned that I'm over-scopeing and also concerned that I don't really have a good game concept fleshed out yet, just a bunch of experimental mechanics ... oh well, I am enjoying learning the ins and outs of OpenGL.

It took me two days, but I finally figured out what kind of game I want to make. Remember "Into the Eagle's Nest"? Or maybe the more recent "Alien Breed" series? So yes, something like that, only with dots.

Of course the display will need to scroll, and to double (or even triple) the number of colors, I will have some of the dots blink. That should give me enough colors for the monsters, the walls, the doors and the items. Arrows for movement (first press turns, subsequent presses move in that direction), fire for shooting, and second fire for the inventory. Seems doable.

The monsters will be re-spawning (they are behind everything), but the items like ammunition and health packs will not — so you need to find the exit as fast as possible.

So after going through numerous designs I've settled on a single screen top down shooter type thing. I'm working on making the theme relevant to the design. I have to work on the game loop and state transitions today while my little nephew takes a nap. This diary entry is quite vague but hopefully I'll have something quite solid and maybe a screenshot or two by tomorrow. Happy game making everyone!

well, my framework is done, it is not perfect, I know, but I have the confidence to finish my work. Once meet the problem about tiled map, use hard code :)

Now I am wondering the game logic, it is a problem :) I will keep trying, as a game, first thing should be funny.

OK, go back to build my A* path finding, maybe I will abondon it if I can get it out today.

I'm submitting early this time because I have a very busy week ahead of me and I can't work on this anymore. I'm satisfied with the result though.

It's a puzzle/strategy game in which you reveal tiles, which may be good or bad creatures. If you reveal opposing tiles, they fight each other and the largest group wins. The winning group loses half of the losing group's size, rounded up, and the losing group loses all creatures. In addition, you cannot have a group too large (more than 7) or you will lose creatures.

This means you need to be strategic on revealing the tiles, as you want to make sure you have a group large enough to defeat your enemies, but also you need to be careful not to make it too large. I hope there's a bit of depth to it.

The connection with the theme may be a bit tenuous, but originally I was planning to have them hide behind objects, which inspired revealing creatures to find out whether they are good or bad. However, I didn't have time to implement that and I hope this version is good enough. I know it's a stretch, but they're still behind a "fog of war". :)

Hope you enjoy it!

        Okay, so I didn't get as much work done as I hoped. I was able to make fully-functional NPC's, that when you run into them, it takes you to their dialog screen. So now that I have almost as much as I need for in-game objects done, I started building some levels. I didn't get very far. I only got about 4 levels done, and those aren't really challenging. It's just an introduction.

        I also added game saving/loading functionality. When you exit the game, the game will save your score and the current level you're on to one of 3 different save files, which you pick which to load/save from when you start the game.

Other than that, that's pretty much it. I now do have a downloadable .zip archive for Python 2.7 and Pygame users (I recommend at least using Pygame 1.8.). You can download it here.

Have a good night everyone (Assuming we are in nearby timezones.)

Got the end-to-end game working and did some tuning via a monster spreadsheet. The spreadsheet turned the tuning into a bit more of a manageable job but it still needs refining as the game progression is still not right.

Tomorrow is graphics and sound implementation which leaves Wednesday (my last day this time) for final tuning.