There hasn't been a lot of time since PyWeek to move the game much further on: just some spare hours in the first couple of days, and then some spare hours today. Still, we can now activate the Triangle, being careful to expose the treasure of the thieving hordes first; otherwise the vortex is unleashed on the player! And I haven't yet started on introducing the various naval powers whose mission it is to stop you definitively...

Hello!

I got 12th out of 15, which is right around where I expected what with the wonky collision response :) I've fixed it to look faaaar better, though, and dialed down the rate at which you can die.

After this, I'll probably be moving all my development to Sourceforge. There's lots of stuff I'd like to do. I had a lot of comments on how the chase camera mode was the most fun, which is neat considering I just threw it in as a lark :)

Sourceforge website is here: The Getaway!

I have to hold up my hands and confess that I thought I had uploaded the Readme.txt. I apologise to everyone for making you hunt down euclid.py and figuring out how to play the "game".

Thanks also to everyone who took the trouble to comment, as it was very encouraging. Over the last couple of days I've made a lot of progress with the level geometry and will soon be in a position to upload something a bit more robust. I'm still working on this, at least when time permits. I'm having fun, and hopefully the source code might save people a bit of time.

It certainly makes a refreshing change from hacking XML in Python, which is currently a large part of my day job.

If anyone would like to help me turn Sneak into a full game by creating some levels for it, let me know and I'll write some documentation for the level editor (which has a rather obscure user interface at the moment).

While incorporating the convert_alpha patch, I discovered to my embarrassment that a bug in my event loop was causing it to try to render flat out, instead of just once per frame. It seems likely that this was the source of at least some of the speed problems people have had.

I've just posted an update (version 0.5) that fixes this along with the convert_alpha. I'd be interested for anyone who was having trouble to try this version and tell me whether it works any better for them.

I've also added an option (-s) to specify the frame rate. The default is 20, but if you still have speed problems, or you find the controls too sensitive, you could try reducing it. (I'll try to find a better solution to the control problem later).

There are some other options, too -- see the README for details.

Thanks, everyone. I ranked about where I expected--lower than I wished, higher than I feared. I know that "Dissolved" was barely a game; there are very few choices throughout Act 1, although a lot more were planned. I blame the time constraints of writing a working text-based engine and oodles of text to go with it in a week.

To my utter shock, I realized when looking over the scores that my game had the highest Fun ranking of any of the single-player entries! That gives me a serious warm-and-fuzzy. Perhaps if I team up with someone next time and do the story... not to mention actually giving people real choices. (Although there are some; did you have Pearce with you at the end?) The low Innovation and Production scores are totally justified. I'm surprised I didn't get more 1s across the board.

I found that stupid "still dark when the lights are on" bug, and it's fixed in the SVN repo. Thanks, and sorry about that!

I hope to see many of you doing NaNoWriMo this year. It's like Pyweek for novels. I'm Phil there (surprise!) ... drop me a note. And I'll be back here next time around too.

(For those who are wondering why I didn't do colour and the like, there's a simple explanation: It doesn't work in Windows. The ncurses library ain't there. Sure, I could have written some sort of Pygame/sdl_ttf based engine or something, but ... ugh.)

For the next PyWeek, how about adding a "ratings detail" link alongside each row of the ratings table?

Not only would this make it easier to get there without going through the entry's main page, which you've probably seen enough of already, but the visited/unvisited status of this link in one's browser would help keep track of which rating comments you've read which you haven't.

First of all, I'd like to thank everyone for the nice ratings they gave me. This was my first attempt at entering a PyWeek, and I wasn't expecting to rank so highly!

Second, I'm really sorry that it seems to have had speed problems on so many people's machines. It wasn't straining my development system (a not-particularly-recent dual 1GHz PPC) so it never occurred to me that average present-day machines wouldn't cope with it. Seems I was wrong, or maybe a substantial percentage of pygamers are using older hardware.

I didn't learn about the convert-alpha trick until after the deadline, or I would probably have used it. I'll definitely use it next time (yes, like Voldemort, I intend to come back...) Also probably set myself a limit of maybe 10% cpu on my system, to allow plenty of headroom.

Also I fully agree that the controls could do with some work, although I can imagine it would have been hugely worse if you were having framerate problems at the same time. I did try to implement Richard's acceleration suggestion about 2 hours before the deadline, but I had problems with it and decided to spend the time on what seemed like more important things, such as another level. I'll see what I can do about it in a post-comp update.

Responses to some individual comments:

> Couldn't find an ending.

That's probably because there isn't one. :-) Another thing that I didn't have time for. You just have to decide when you've found all the info and stop playing.

I'm open to suggestions on what the ending should be. Maybe making your way up to the roof where you get whisked away by an (unmarked, of course) InfoSneak Inc. helicopter?

> Some music would't be wrong..

True, but my composing skills are even worse than my artistic ones, so I'd need to find some that was freely stealable... again, I'm open to suggestions.

> The level often becomes unsolvable after returing from capture.

Quite likely, yes. That part needs some more thought. Maybe add some extra batteries when returning or something.

> If someone handn't told me about the open window I never would've got into the building.

Yes, that was perhaps a bit obscure. I was thinking of having a message you could find that gave you a hint, but again, not enough time.

> after being caught, that char always walks left automatically

Hadn't noticed that one -- must be forgetting to reset the current action or something.

> I couldn't figure out how to get past the receptionist without bribing the guard though.

There's a clue to that in the instructions...

> Well, the game seems sort of like prince of persia, except for the swordfights. Where are the swordfights?

Well, I did say *kind* of PoP-like. Swordfights wouldn't really fit into the theme. :-) Maybe hand-to-hand combat with spies from rival organisations...?

> The multicolor lasers also don't seem to work perfectly - I had all my cloak batteries on, but still got caught on some of them.

Your cloaks have to be set to exactly the same colour as the beam in order to get past it. Otherwise it would be too easy -- just turn on all cloaks regardless of the beam colour. (The lasers are more discerning than human vision in this respect. Probably should mention that in the help.)

Thanks once again,
Greg

Sweeeet, saw the ratings an hour ago and I reached my goal!!! At least 5th place was what I was going for and I got it on the dot. If I would have fixed that name bug I would have achieved 4th as two people gave me 1 1 1's for that, which is fair. I also didn't fix those stupid level bugs, everyone I'm sorry those dogs were impossible when on top of portals. That was a huge bug on my part!

I'm planning on increasing a lot of things on this game including improved gameplay, better AI, MORE AI, animations for all enemy characters, improved swords, better detail how to block the bullets with your sword, all that good stuff. Plus bosses and more levels!

Level Pack (to fix those annoying portals)
http://www.eyeforcode.com/pyweek3/levelpack.zip

This will fix all the portal & ladder problems, its VERY beatable. My high score is somewhere around 37,000. Remember when you use your shield you get more points, and you can stop from getting hit by bullets.

Thanks for all the kind comments. I'm very much aware of the lacking gameplay elements - stupidly enough I left the actual game code/rules until I didn't have any time left at all... And the level was very much a 5-minute hack too.

I started tinkering with a post-compo version, made a longer level, then I figured I needed some music so I started fiddling with a music app I've been developing since April. I ended up putting in a LOT of code work there and now it's looking like it might finally be coming to an end.
As soon as I feel the music app is at a presentable state I'll put up a public beta (will link it here as well for anyone interested) and get started making some tunes for the game. Then I'll finish up some of the gameplay tidbits that are still missing and _finally_ start adding more enemies and levels.

There will be a post-compo version. Only thing uncertain is the scope of it and the time of delivery. Hopefully by next weekend. Stay tuned.