Because of an over ambitious project idea, a PyODE bug, an engine not too well suited for anything too grand, and a severe shortage of time, I decided to go with a much simpler game idea. This morning I made myself a cup of coffee using one of those singles bags and I thought to myself, "Hey, this has a string!" So now my game will be about making tea and coffee.

Teacups and coffee cups will go along three conveyor belts. Pressing 1, 2, or 3 will lower the low, middle, or high conveyor belt's tea bag into the the cup. Try not to miss any cups, and don't put any tea in coffee cups. When the coffee mugs reach the end of the conveyor belt you have to press the space bar to fill them with coffee (or something like that, I'm not sure yet.)

Odd idea? Yes, but at least I don't need to mess with physics, animation, or anything too complex. Right now I just have the graphics for a coffee cup, a tea cup, and a tea bag. I might be able to pull this off.

Today I added string bridges to cross over magma and blocks than can be pulled with the hook.

Tomorrow I'll add the level-exit tile and several levels and the life/string counters. And I a have time, I'll add some monster. And, That's all. I 'll have the last day for polish, music and put on a menu screen.

Jane signed on a while back, but just recently signed up here. So today I've added her to our team officially. Right now we're at the point where we have physics, objects, and they can interact with the levels we've made. We gabbed the menu system that PyMike made, and it is great. Got a nice backdrop to the menu, and added in a nice font. It kinda looks like a Napoleon Dynamite cover now. heh I would put i a N.D. quote but that seems a bit much.

I just don't feel like programming anything today. I think I'm heading for a dropout. =(

Despite my getting all emotional earlier, I have made some progress.

At this point, I just need to finish up the player character code, write the level generator, and then get a menu put together.

Amazing what you can do when you just sit down and write code for a couple hours. It's a habit I should really get into XD

I also have a new collision engine. I've used pygame.sprite, or at least the basic parts of it, which has allowed me to base the collision response on rectangles, which will hopefully make it much more platformer-ish, and less room-full-of-overcaffienated-tourettes-patient-esque. :P

I should have the something playable, not necessarily with menus, settings, or anything, but playable some time tomorrow. I plan to get back to work later today, and maybe pull an all-nighter tonight.

Also, anyone know of a good, idiot-proof IRC client for Linux?
I'd like to get on #pyweek, but I haven't been able to get an IRC client to work. I can never get any of them to connect to a server... ^^;

Any help there would be appreciated.

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Never mind on the IRC thing. Someone in another topic just suggested a good one. :P

More new features added:

-New ship, the SS Busan, which moves around the screen. Will eventually start dropping random junk like oil barrels into the sea.

-Brilliant New animated 3d fish graphics as well as new eel sprite graphics.

-Fish now spawn randomly in multiple waves going in either direction.

-Pause function added. Press space bar to pause.

Their is a lot of work to do before the game is fully playable but we are making great progress towards this goal.

Very little progress so far. I was able to code quite a bit on the train but here the internets are killing my productivity. :( Hopefully just posting this will motivate me enough to get to work. :)

Okay. I had a talk with a friend who pointed out to me that if I did this all Pythonically, it wouldn't take as long as it looked like in my weepy-eyed, pointy little head.

I've been looking through some tutorials on pygame.sprite, and I've realized that it won't actually take that long to do this, if I do it intelligently, don't get frustrated and burst into tears, don't get side-tracked, don't add features, and don't constantly check for new comments and posts on this site.

So, with under 72 Hours to do this, I'm going to give it my best and try not to get discouraged again, as I know it can't be fun having some first-timer get all sad and give up because his engine isn't running correctly. Besides. If I don't, I know I'll always regret it. I started regretting it minutes after making the decision. And I don't want to do thing's I'll regret if I can help it.

Please forgive my dramatics. I'm very new to these things, but that isn't an excuse.

On with it, then. A whole engine in a short amount of time.

This has definitely been the most relaxing PyWeek yet... having abandoned the complex game-of-the-year idea that just didn't fit this theme, we've settled into this much-simpler game. We've both expressed surprise at how well the game is turning out -- we were both skeptical it would be much fun, but it's turning out to have some nice complexities and tricks. The relative ease of programming has left me a lot more time for gameplay tuning and iteration than usual.

The birds in this screenshot are actually flying backwards. This is due to an apparent artist/programmer world-view difference in what the "native" direction of a sprite should be. The artist, being primarily right-brained, draws all her sprites facing to the left; while the programmer, knowing that the mathematical X axis increases to the right, writes code that assumes right-facing entities.

Clearly this is could become a terminal dilemma, whose resolution will require much negotiation and compromise (of the artist).

I just talked to my friends about my decision. One of them gave me some pointers.

I really hope I haven't been too much of a bother. A friend of mine who has lots of experience has decided to help me learn the things I'll need to know.

I'm sorry for getting emotional like that. That's something I need to work on not doing.

I really want to apologize to anyone who's been bothered by my being really moody like this. It's been really stressful this week. More so than I had expected.

I guess I've kinda been using this as a vent, and I really shouldn't have.
Sorry. ^^;