Diaries - March 2025: “Downstream”

March 2025 challenge: “Downstream”

Catfish Escape - Wrapping up, Day 5-6

Posted by regarrzo on 2025/03/28 22:35

The end is nigh, and my semester is starting. Therefore I didn't have as much time as I'd like to have to work on the game. I've still many things since the last version like

- A healing pickup

- A way to change levels

- Improved sprites

- Improved dungeon generation

- Damage numbers

I hope you all enjoy this entry. It might not be extremely fun to play, but it nontheless taught me a lot about programming, especially about programming within an ECS :)

Check out the code if you want. Especially at the beginning I tried to keep quality high. Most if it is probably pretty readable, although some of the system code is done quite hastily and without regard for maintainance as I just wanted to wrap things up.

I'm excited to play your games everybody, it was fun!

Bye bye.

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DownStream - Day 6

Posted by Anders on 2025/03/28 20:14

I uploaded final builds for Linux, Windows and Mac for review. I decided to submit the very simple version of the game for now, in case I do not feel like doing the extra parts tomorrow. I am more excited to start a new, more ambitious project next than stay on this idea. I will definitely compete again in next Pyweek with the goal of submitting a much more complex game

Thank you to everyone who plays + reviews the game!

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Swimmy Submarine - It's a wrap!

Posted by ntoll on 2025/03/28 18:32

I spent the final couple of hours of this afternoon getting the game to the state needed for submitting it as a final version to be judged. This mostly meant writing a comprehensive README and testing on desktop and mobile versions of Chrome and Firefox (for other browsers, YMMV).

You can play the game in your browser here: https://ntoll.pyscriptapps.com/swimmysub/

Alternatively, you can try it out in a mobile browser via this QR code:

The source code is available online here: https://pyscript.com/@ntoll/swimmysub/latest

I also had some fun polishing final features (for example, you can de-select animated backgrounds - a feature that half the world loves to bits, while the other half loathes it).

Play testing allowed me to fine tune the way the game speeds up as you try to grab as much loot over the 1 minute available, although I'm not entirely happy I've got quite the right settings, and this might be something I look into post-PyWeek.

A lot of this game also depends upon the random generation of treasure and aquatic friends so, while it's usually lots of fun, it can sometimes be frustrating if Python is being randomly random at randomly choosing a point at which to add treasure and other stuff. Many years ago, I once read a fascinating paper on randomness in games... it turns out, from a psychological point of view, if the game randomly doesn't do anything, or randomly does the same thing in quick succession, then players don't think it's random... but biased in some way. Therefore, for the sake of players' frustrations, it's better if a game is predictably random, if that at all makes sense. Also, it's important to balance the sense of skill needed to play the game vs. the randomness needed so it isn't boring. If it's too random, everything happens just by chance. See my comment above about tuning the game. ;-)

I also had fun generating an appropriately hallucinogenic AI poster for the game:

I'm looking forward to the feedback from the next round, as well as enjoying the fruits of everyone else's labours. Huge congratulations to everyone else who managed to get something over the line, and thanks to Dan (et al.) for organising another wonderful PyWeek.

Play testing is going to be lots of fun..!

Onwards!

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The Current of Time - ときのながれ (Tokinonagare) - Day 5 - More backgrounds and Simple code logics.

Posted by KNKWasTaken on 2025/03/28 17:47

"Either you run the day or the day runs you." - Jim Rohn

I know I said "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," but the opposite is also true.

Seeing that the deadline is very close, I started putting together my not-so-close game mechanics and accidently made the functions so simple, that if it were a module, anyone could make a story game in like 5 mins.

I also hit writing 869 lines of code, but it'll probably be way lower once I complete it.

Also made several cool backgrounds for several dialogue, alongside a new boss and god (although he doesn't look like one) sprite.
Simple Programming

896-line code

New Sprite: Boss of Enemies New Sprite: God

New Background: Sacred River

New Background: Underwater Hall

New Background: Underwater Hall - Enemy Arrives

New Background: Underwater Hall - Showdown

New Background: Nagare's Room

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Flow - Network testing

Posted by coffee on 2025/03/28 09:26

Hey everyone,

we have been hard at work adding/fixing stuff within our game.

We mostly have our gameplay down and are now optimizing the netcode, polishing the visuals and playing around with some gimmick ideas.

See below for one of the first actual online pvp matches we played :)

Good luck to everyone else on the last two days

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Awaking - Difficulties

Posted by Walkercito on 2025/03/28 03:50

Hyo... (⁠⌐⁠■⁠-⁠■⁠) How’s everyone doing with their projects!?

I've seen some really cool entries so far, and I'm already excited to test them all. I haven't made any diary entries 'cause I didn't know this was a thing haha, but I’d like to share a summary of today's progress and setbacks. (⁠٥⁠↼⁠_⁠↼⁠)

Since yesterday, I've been working on the gameplay of our game, including interactions with the NPCs and their three states 7u7. Everything was going great—I only needed to "synchronize" the player's light with the Influence bar to complete the gameplay and move on to bug fixes and quality-of-life improvements, like some simple text elements (you’ll see them soon, I hope).

But we ran into a problem. Until now, I had been working from a laptop, dealing with things beyond my control, like blackouts, unstable internet, and other issues. But now, I no longer have the laptop, so I completely depend on electricity to use my desktop PC. (Not to get political, but this is due to the dictatorship that rules the country—incapable of providing even the most basic necessities in the 21st century. ಠ⁠_⁠｣⁠ಠ)

I wanted to make this entry to let you all know that if we can’t finish the game, it won’t be because of time, creativity, or determination—but due to external circumstances.

See you tomorrow with another update!

ミ⁠●⁠﹏⁠☉⁠ミ

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DownStream - Day 5

Posted by Anders on 2025/03/27 22:26

Thought about cut scenes, more complicated levels, and animating sprites today. Fun fun

The game I planned to make is very simple, and I've basically completed it and played with a bunch of tools / libraries so i count it as a success. If I work more on the project before submitting I will maybe add a metagame and some more fun cutscenes. Also just testing, testing and making sure the packages work on all the os

Good luck finishing to all the teams!

2 comments

Swimmy Submarine - Almost there...

Posted by ntoll on 2025/03/27 20:05

Today has mostly been tidy ups and final details:

The countdown clock gives you 1 minute to score as many points as possible.
I dropped the accelerometer API idea, realising that as you tilt the device you can no longer see the screen!
Instead, I use touch points if you're on a mobile browser. If you touch above the sub, it goes up, below the sub it goes down and when there's no touch it levels out.
I added copious comments to the code. It's very much a bodge job which reflects the experimental and spike-y nature of the entry. But hey, perhaps by next PyWeek we'll have organised ourselves enough to have a nice and simple game engine.
I demoed it to various folks and got mostly positive feedback, with a few suggestions for improvements. You can see this via the recording of today's PyScript FUN community call: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXmfqAy9HOo&t=1491s
The animated background is something people absolutely love, or they really don't like it. Can't please everyone I guess... ;-)

I feel the game just requires a little more polish so that it speeds up, and more assets are added, in a smoother manner, but that can wait until tomorrow. I'll cut a release on PyScript.com so folks can play it online, and make sure there's a zipped up version you can run locally too.

It's been lots of fun and I'm looking forward to playing everyone else's games and doing the feedback bit of PyWeek.

Onwards..!

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The Current of Time - ときのながれ (Tokinonagare) - Day 5 - Resting

Posted by KNKWasTaken on 2025/03/27 16:31

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

Just lazed around for today, so not much progress.

Did end up converting the separate scripts to functions that can be used in any order to create the main gameplay story.

Also created some questionable logic.
Gameplay Functions

Questionable Logic

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DownStream - Day 4

Posted by Anders on 2025/03/26 22:23

I have been enjoying the learning process a great deal, tinkering on various things like music and image generation. I learned how to use GarageBand today to edit some different song sample, that was fun.

Today I implemented a menu system, some music ideas, and made the game system a little more complex (still very simple). I think I will gave more than enough time to play around with some other features like an easter egg meta game and also some cut scenes and artwork for that. This whole process is inspiring lots of ideas and solutions for other bigger projects which I am now looking forward to even more.

I have been enjoying reading everyone's diary entries and looking forward to playing all the games!

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