Huhh... It wasn't easy. There are many features we didn't have time to implement. Maybe we'll release them in a patch after the competiton. Rune drawing is a little difficult so be patient and follow the instuctions we gave. You'll succeed for sure and become a master wizard at the end of the game :)

We are finally done our first PyWeek entry. This also marks the first time we have ever used pygame. Even thought we didn't finish the game, we at least have something that moves pixels on the screen. w00t! For the next PyWeek we'll probably have a much better idea of what to expect, and a better idea of how far we can get in a week's time.

Thanks to Richard for organizing this competition! It's amazing that something like this exists on the internet. Thanks also to Richard for making the Skellington - it makes doing submissions for a newbie like me much less stressful.

Also, thanks to Wes for doing the birds, the clouds and Sammy the Squirrel in the game. I've worked beside him for quite a while and never clued into his drawing talents until this week. Thanks!

Thanks to Mike for his written-in-a-drunken-stupor bird code. It made including the birds last night much easier.

Thanks to Windex for his inspiration with the game concept and many, many other ideas before this week started. Next time, don't leave for Las Vegas on Monday night. :)

Over and out.

I hope I haven't forgotten anything important. I still have a couple of hours just before the deadline to add final corrections, but I hope I don't have to. There should probably be more levels, and there are a few imperfections, but the game seems fun to play, and I'm pretty satisfied with the graphics and sound effects. A longer diary entry about everything that went right and wrong during the week will come some time during next week.

Well, I've got only a few hours left to work on the game. And I've decided to make an impressive looking menu and opening screen, which will hopefully give a good first impression...

The is one of the backgrounds for the menu: Background for Menu

Well, i woke up about an hour ago, and already have half of the things I wanted to get done, done :D :D :D

I'm taking a break to eat and wake up now, see you on irc when I get back!

My day 6 wasn't very productive - I only got about 3 hours to work on the game. During that time I helped Fydo get going with the intro and story screens, and he's done an amazing job on those. JDruid's music was mixed in as well and that's really helped make the game more complete.

I spent most of today finishing off the core gameplay stuff (baddies, winning, losing, some FX for picking things up, some more level design). Mostly I was fixing bugs, and I think I've gotten the worst of them (notice I don't even consider saying I got "all" of them ;)

I've uploaded our "final" release, which may be revised overnight by the other guys so there might be another upload tomorrow.

I'm pretty happy with how things turned out. From the README:

On a programming note, this game has some interesting features.

The landscape is generated from a pixmap (see lvl/one*.png or one.xcf
for the complete overview). The pixmap is examined and turned into a series
of cubic bezier curves, rendered partly by OpenGL (the solid bits) and
partly by hand (the line bits).

I also used curves to render the trees and clouds. Run lib/cloud.py and
lib/tree.py for some examples (hitting SPACE to regenerate).

Unfortunately the curved landscape was a pain to work with and there's some
collision glitches (and probably bugs, but nothing I've run into lately).

The game concept is two-fold:

1. hyper-evolution up from a lowly worm to some form more suitable for a
   given environment, and
2. mostly free-form exploration of a large, interesting playing world.

The latter didn't really work in the final submission for PyWeek because time
constraints meant we couldn't construct that large, interesting world. Just
a large one. We had intended to have NPCs to talk to (and bribe with the
money you find in order to locate more items around the world). There's
also clearly scope for more skill-based challenges and so on.

The code and the design discussion is available at:

   http://code.google.com/p/fluffymenace/

There's some dev switches on the command-line:

  -nomusic
  -nointro

And in-game you can hit "d" to pause simulation and hit "s" to step.

UNIMPLEMENTED:
- better level design
- baddies that move
- flying and swimming baddies

KNOWN BUGS:
- none that we're aware of!

IMPROVEMENTS ON THE TABLE
- reduce the number of line segments in landscape
- use ARB_occlusion_query if it's available for flying collision
- background for sky
- we can vary friction on ground to allow sliding but don't use it

The Probe Design screen is implemented. Also requesting more funds so you can fly additional missions.

I just uploaded what I have so far of my game. You have infinite health potions, so it's not really a challenge, but still. If anyone's not busy (ha ha) I'd just like to see if it works on your systems.

My list from the last entry, modified to indicate what I've accomplished:

1. Keyboard buttons activate on-screen buttons, rather than just the mouse - DONE
2. Random dungeon generation - DONE
3. Non-monster sprites - DONE
4. Stairs up - DONE
5. Activity log (i.e. hits, misses, etc) - DONE
6. Spawning monsters - DONE
7. More variety of items
8. PC can drop inventory items - DONE
9. PC can pick things up - DONE
10. More than 10 items in inventory should be accessible
11. Filling rooms with random treasure
12. Monsters drop loot
13. Game over screen - DONE
14. Save game - DONE
15. Load Game - DONE
16. Character Creation Screen

I've just uploaded dambuilder 0.9, a first source version of Dambuilder. See its included INSTALL.txt for requirements.

Next I will upload a Windows version. Then after a bit more play testing, I will upload final versions.

The game is now playable with a simple goal: to get 100 in health.

I don't have a plan how to extend it further.