I added a title, credits, icon, cloud decor, and more sounds for everything from jumping to flipping colors

I need to add obstacles and design levels :/

Spent some hours this evening rewriting the code to make it a two player side scrolling racing game, added a whole bunch of game objects for the players to avoid (at risk of slowing them down) and updated the colours of the original stick-figure animations.

PyGame Zero and Mu have been really great in this respect and I've managed to quickly turn things around in terms of code. The "design" work for the graphical game assets was a right royal pain and I'm getting to really dislike the GIMP (but my only other option in terms of art packages that I know, is MS Paint). ;-)

The end result is a completely different game, but it sort of looks very similar. In any case, there's an aim to win (get X distance in front of the other player) and the game gets progressively harder (more objects appear and they speed up). I need to tweak some of the settings and game-play but I think I'm almost there...!

Tomorrow I need to:

* Add an intro (instructions) and outro (when a player wins).
* Add some textual information to the screen (distance between players, power-up information).
* Add sounds / music.
* Package the thing so I have something to upload for people to look at.
* Add a bunch of polish / tweaks as a result of "play" testing.
* Saturday is completely out for me, so I need to be "finished" finished by the end of tomorrow.

I also have a whole bunch of feedback for Dan about PyGame Zero.

In any case, here's what it looks like right now:

The basics are all done. My git log reads: Traps, Wands, Food, Permadeath, AmuletOfYendor, MonsterAbilities. So we have hidden traps that you probably don't want to accidentally trip over. Wands that do awesome stuff and can only be found in the magic world. When you die, like a true roguelike, you die. There's a nice farewell screen for you too. On the lighter-side, if you do somehow manage to complete the game, you can get the Amulet of Yendor and there is a nice congratulations screen for when you make it out, which you'll probably never see. And monsters now have annoying special behaviours, mostly in the magic world. I think the Siren has to be my favourite addition, that monster will lure you to them, which is a real pain at times!

All that's really left to do is adding spice, I've got a few more tweaks to add to combat, one more scroll to make work, and some additional features to add to the map. Then it's just balancing the combat, without the tweaks I want to add, it's a little too easy for the first few levels, at the moment. So some balancing will need to be done to make it more roguelike. After all, I have friends who've played Rogue for decades without ever completing it, just like the original authors.

Despite the rush, overall I have to say the approach I've taken to the programming has mostly being beneficial, using functions instead of methods. The two places it's bitten me is in using one movement function for both monsters and players; my code would be tidier if I separate those two out, and the ensuing combat functions.  Besides that, I got a nice groove on making scrolls, potions, wands, traps etc. After the competition I intend to abstract out a lot of that repeated code and the same for the actions repeated code. Looks like we should come in on time!

The game is almost ready.

:

YouTube gameplay. 10 seconds.

The bug is Zapped!! Ultimately, I didn't have to do too much changing, it was just adding another if statement in the code.

Since the bug got zapped, I was able to play through the game one full time. It is an alright game, somewhat fun, but could definitely use some additional features.

The game has been extended to include multiple levels. It uses gravity and bouncing for the ball, the gravity reverses after reaching the last stage, and then the player has to return to the beginning to win. If you fall back through the hole you came through, then you die.

The theme of two worlds is the world before and after gravity reversal. It should be somewhat fun. I want to add more features and make some interesting twists. The stages were created with text files, which is something I got from "which way is up" (although I did not like the way the files were read, so I only used the design, not the code). The stages are hard to design since they have to be effective both forward and in reverse.

I spent a lot of time on a specific bug that popped up in the gameplay. I have modeled the gravity off Richard Jone's pygame tutorial gravity. I even used the block sample he had for the game. However, in his code, the player gets stuck as it tries to move left and right. You can only move when jumping. Unlike his gravity, the ball in this game bounces. so it should bounce off the ground and ceiling and be blocked by the sides. However, it seems to get stuck on the ground sometimes and unintentionally continue falling and bouncing at the same time until it gets "spring loaded" and flies away. 

I tried to determine whether this bug was "playable". I think it is severe enough that it requires more work, but I would hate to sacrifice all the features to solve one bug. This is programming though, and features be damned. I will try to at least produce a menu and win/lose screen. I will try to use masks instead of rects, but I have found I have made things worse at times. Games are very difficult to test and, since i have been lax on version control, revert.

Have you heard of reigns game?.. well my entry is going to be very similar to that game. Hopefully the story i've got is funny / interesting enough for you guys to play and appreciate. Thought ill' share some screen shots of work flow iv'e got going on, as i invested a lot of time into it.
      
               

As you can see the view is pretty close to what is setup on cocos creator. This is good enough for me to get started. I've worked on getting the animations from cocos creator as well, but was not really able to leverage due to some bugs in the way the nodes are positioned on screen. Didn't want to spend time fixing it for now.

So I've created my game and it's REALLY BORING and just a little bit naff. :-)

However, I have a plan.

It'll still be a stick-figure game called "Paper Chase", but I'm completely re-jigging the "story". It'll be two player: Red vs Blue (the two worlds of different coloured biros).

WATCH THIS SPACE!!!

Today I got a whole lot of work done. I entered in 5 different levels (I also had to think them up so it took a while), but at least I got a decent portion of work done.

I added 2 other obstacles, keys and doors. Both are connected by a special id only used by those two objects, which allows for the player to collect the key, which automatically triggers the corresponding door to open, no matter which side of the level the key or the door is on. So one cube can open a door for the cube on the other side.