Hello again! How are you doing tonight!? (⁠｡⁠•̀⁠ᴗ⁠-⁠)⁠✧

I read your comments on the last (and first) entry, and I wanted to say thank you for the attention :'3. It really means a lot to me. Now, moving on to today's entry!

Even though there's not much time left, I think I can manage to at least provide a simple working prototype of the planned gameplay. I might stay up all night to try and finish the main mechanic (⁠⌐⁠■⁠-⁠■⁠).

Today, I finished the entire player light and Influence system. These two are proportional in gameplay—if one goes up, the other goes up, and if one goes down, the other follows. I wanted to add some sounds to this, like a heartbeat for when your energy is dropping and tense music for when the light is fading away, but I might not be able to include them. Maybe just the background music (⁠ ⁠/⁠^⁠ω⁠^⁠)⁠/⁠♪⁠♪

The light system has the option to be calculated in real time (giving a smoother and prettier look when fading or growing) or baked for potato PCs (like mine ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯)The baked version pre-renders all the frames of the light using an async loading screen and then saves them in a dictionary for easy use if enabled ಠ⁠◡⁠ಠ

I was able to make this progress thanks to a power generator, since I’ve been without electricity since yesterday ಥ⁠‿⁠ಥ

There are still some things left to polish before moving on to packaging and testing, but I think I can make it (⁠・⁠∀⁠・⁠)

See you tomorrow, and hopefully, ready for playing!

Here a quick explanation how the pseudo 3D effect in the game works using only 2D rendering.


Parallax planes, but different
1. early development, everything flat, only lines and squares
2. first attempt to draw in pseudo 3D, didn't look great
3. second attempt, much better looking, how?
4. it's done using layers, e.g. guard consists of 7 layers
5. also the console, door opener and treasure are rendered with layers: 3 layers were enough
6. walls need a different technique: pygame-ce has no method to draw textured polygons. So the walls are drawn line by line, each adjusted in place and length
7. showing the layers of the robots.
The layers are displaced like a parallax layer, but in front instead of behind the main layer as usual.

Here some screenshot how it looks in the game:

I didn't get around to adding a diary update this time around, but it’s time I make up for it.

Day 1:

- Nothing much happened on the first day. Just brainstorming ideas on how I can make a game that fits into the theme. There were some cool and funny ideas, nothing too concrete.

Day 2:

-shortly after I woke up, I thought of a funny chicken themed game that fits well with the theme. It immediately became my favorite idea worth sticking with to the very end. Worked on creating a Game Design Document to layout what I need to do to accomplish this as well as a development timeline.

Day 3-5:

- Coding and framework begins. I explicit made it so I focus solely on gameplay mechanics before even considering adding textures/sprites. This surprisingly took the longest to achieve simply because of the movement mechanics I wanted to implement. I was also struggling significantly on collision detection between the player and all the other objects.

Day 6:

-This is where finishing this project is going to cost me sleep....big time. Once I was satisfied with how the player moves and solved the issues with collisions it was time for level design.

Update: Almost forgot to mention this but my CPU overheated and shut off my PC mid game dev. Extreme worry sets in and had to check what's causing it. Turns out I'm overdue for new thermal paste on my CPU. Got that fixed rather quickly. My PC is fine since. Imagine not finishing a game jam because your PC died on you...

Day 7:

-After finishing the level design, I realized that I have a minimally viable product that I could submit now. From here on out I was trying to implement all the sprite art and background as much as I could before the time is up. I was never able to get sound and music implemented. Plus, the lack of sleep between day 6-7 has got me physically and mentally drained.

24-hour upload time:

- Game is packaged and ready to go. I'm considering sharing my Game Design Document which details the development process as well as a timeline of every task I've completed or not completed.

Best wishes to everyone who stuck out to the end. I look forward to playing your games soon!

I BECAME THE GREATEST COOK!
Not by learning how to cook better, but by SABOTAGING my friends and colleagues!
I have spiced their soups, I have salted their ice-creams, I have burned their steaks into ash, swept up under the kitchen tiles.
Noone suspected a thing!

Download TRAITOR BOT 9000

Let us know if you have any difficulty running it, thanks.

If you have any problems or found any bugs, you can leave a message here. I hope you like the game!

Unfortunately I will be unable to finish my entry in time.  This is due to multiple factors that I foresaw being a potential obstacle from the beginning.  Other than work getting especially busy this week, my game engine Loxoc is still in development versions and because of this I have prioritized bug fixing and polishing the engine over everything else during the jam.  Nevertheless I am glad to have been able to participate in PyWeek38.  This game jam has helped me discover many bugs with my engine and flesh out engine features from a new perspective.  As the first ever actual attempt at making a game with my engine, I am happy with how it performed despite the obstacles that came along the way.  In many ways it performed better than I expected it to.  I am excited to continue development on my engine and hope by next time PyWeek comes around I will be better prepared with a more robust version of my engine that wont require during-the-jam maintenance.

Got to finish in time I'm so happy! If you find any issues let me know on discord: n_0_

Done! Hope you enjoy! Please post any issues here or catch me on discord!