TL;DR: I want to do something other than Cops Shoot Bad Guys, so you fly around and complete tasks.

Basic gameplay:

You control a hovercraft from a top-down view. Tasks will be randomly generated, then displayed as "pings" on your view and mini-map. Once you reach a ping, you will have to remain at the ping for an amount of time based on the task. A next step might be required, like transporting a wounded officer you picked up to the hospital. The challenge comes from having multiple tasks that require your attention and a limited time to complete them.

Origin:

I wanted to make a police game that wasn't just a shoot 'em up. Because police do a lot, with shooting crooks being only a small amount of their job. I had been toying with the idea of a top-down flying game for a while and realized within two minutes of seeing the theme that these ideas could work together.

I've decided to go with Arcade. It just looks so much easier and many of the things I'd like to do, like tinting images, have explicit functions, rather than pygame, where I'd have to mess with blending and stuff.

I've also made a logo. I'm not sure what I want the main screen to look like. Maybe just a color gradient. I'll see.

Haven't done much. I really need to get going!

The future is still unknown, but it looks like the direction is good.

It's easy to write code, when you know what this code has to do :-)

Day 0:

Choosing what module to use, settled on PyGame.
Refreshed my knowledge on PyGame a bit.
Made a plan of how the game should work.
Created and found some art to use as a template.
Made animations.

I decided to go for a management-style game, where you run around town and bust crime around the city. Probably won't get me much in Innovation points but it's something I haven't done and I wanted to try so I'm gonna go for it. Probably will add a few extra determining factors in as well, like energy and gas and stuff. Can't think of a clever name, so I'm just gonna call it On Patrol until I think of something better.

Anyways, that was an unnecessarily long explanation. Let's get to the even more boring stuff. My school has piled on work, so I also spent most of yesterday and today finishing up future assignments for the week so I don't procrastinate and can just focus on this, which will be really nice. I meant to do it all before the jam but I underestimated the workload, as well as what I was already tackling for school and work.

Anywho you don't care about homework either, tell us about the game!!! Uh... I made a map loader, which spawns in buildings and roads 'n stuff. Hoping to have multiple maps, but we'll see how that pans out. I also made a click n point movement system along roads so that your cop car finds a path and goes there. You can click on buildings to and it'll send you to the nearest parking spot/road. So that's pretty neat. I also made a little event loop where crimes pop up in buildings every once in a while, and they go through multiple cycles where more and more bad stuff happens (like more stuff gets stolen, or an impromptu wrestling match continues), until they eventually fade out and you lose health or get a complaint filed or something, I dunno yet.

I get an F on organization for this post, but that's ok. I mostly do this for self-reference, and I can decipher my own language fine.

Good luck to the rest of you guys, and go outside every once in a while or something.

No screenshot on this diary entry but Will have something to show on the next one.

Something something tag innocent people to get munies, something something don't get chased by cop, something something, get more peoples monies, get chased by more cops. Its a rough idea that definitely needs polish.

Title screen menu and gameplay basic framework is in progress.