I switched on this morning and found that my monitor wasn't working -- a problem I can do without just before a pyweek deadline! Fortunately I had an alternative monitor available to keep me going.

It seems to have finally come together well enough for a release. The stair placement problem seems to be fixed, and the character image generator is working more or less as intended.

However, the floor generation algorithm still isn't quite right -- I think sometimes it generates insoluble maps, with an enemy blocking access to an item needed to defeat it, or maybe it's just not placing the item at all. So for the time being, if you get stuck you'll just have to start a new game and hope for a better outcome.

As always, there are numerous things I didn't get time for -- furniture, better carpet placement, locked doors and cupboards... weasels...

The final fourteen hours of PyWeek 9 were less frantic and stressful than we had expected. Four and a half hours before the deadline, we adjourned for a leisurely dinner and some milkshakes across the road before returning to figure out how to package everything for three different operating systems.

Lessons learned:

• Milkshakes are an awesome way to avoid packaging PyWeek entries for Windows.
• Constants don't actually have to be constant.
• If in doubt, reimplement everything in the external library from scratch twice before reading the code.
• Planning is overrated.
• Documentation is overrated.
• Never underestimate the motivational power of a pretty picture.
• There's no such thing as a hack that's too horrible.
• You really can convince your boss to delay an important deployment for pyweek.

Lessons not learned:

• How to fit in sleep between day jobs, social obligations and pyweek.
• Where to get food on short notice at weird hours.

All in all, this has been a fantastic experience. We had a great team, a few good ideas and ended up with a game that actually worked. There's still a long list of features we'd like to add, and we'll probably get to them over the next month or two.

We'll definitely be back for the next pyweek. :-)

Well, not a game really, just another toy. In this one you fly around on a feather, trying not to fall into the water.

"Feather" wasn't an easy theme for me. I spent three days in search of some vision that would drive me ahead. In the end, I was hesitating between doing a straightforward adventure game, and exploring feather-riding idea suggested to me by a friend. I picked the latter, and then real trouble began.

This time I used PyODE to take care of basic physics, it is very handy when you need to keep track of forces, torques and movement in 3D. Another great package is pyeuclid, which provides one with most basic 3D math required. And of course pygame, the one and only. I also must mention the "Scene" pattern I picked up from cocos2d, very easy and powerful way to control the top-level state of the game program.

In the end, "Flight" turned out better than I have expected: handling and flight characteristics got a lot better after careful tuning. I didn't finish the story, but my lack of creative skills is to be blamed here. Even now I have a very vague idea how story should develop. Otherwise it is pretty complete, with nice music, not so nice graphics and sound effects.

Up until last week I was working from home all the time and putting work aside for a week was no problem last time. Going to work is new to me, and combining it with PyWeek was quite a challenge for my inexperienced self! I did some work on Sunday — I had a nice idea, drew some art and wrote a prototype. These were for three different games though :). I ended up with making a game from the art.

• The prototype was for a game where you design a lander (scribble something with the mouse) that then enters an atmosphere that I simulate very precisely and the goal is to land with an acceptable speed (no control during landing). The simulation was not very precise in the prototype but it already used up way too much CPU.
• The idea was a game where you start with a naked bird and you can place feathers on her in any pattern you like. Preferably different patterns would not just look different ("design your parrot"), but give you different abilities, etc.
• The art was a flapping animation for Icarus (or an angel?).

So there, I made a kind of side-scrolling shooter with Icarus. Except that you can not shoot. But everyone else can :). Give it a try!

(This game brought to you by Richard, who magnanimously allowed my entry to be registered late!)

Main character in game. Looks great, but he falls through the platform and hangs by his hat. GAR. pencil and paper time.

Only just managed to finish this year (for some definition of finish)

I was working all week and was really tired in the evenings so I didn't start making anything until today, having finally thought of a workable idea on thursday. Luckily cav made some nice art for it so I didn't waste any time attempting to draw stuff this time and instead got straight on with the programming.

I was having serious doubts earlier on but I am quite pleased with the result now. It's a bit like my first pyweek entry in that the gameplay is really really simple; I'm just hoping that this doesn't make it too boring.

I think it probably still needs some tweaking to get the difficulty right, and I would have liked to add some music, but unfortunately I didn't have time for that. Hopefully I'll be able to do better next time.

After pretty much a whole week of doing nothing, except talking about the idea for 10 minutes on the first
day, piman decided to write the game anyway. He worked on it for about 15 hours total in the last days,
and I made a few graphics in about two hours today. Talk about a wasted week.
Nevertheless, I'm quite happy with the result, even if it's really immature right now. Let's see how
well it turns out when we continue working on it out-of-contest.

Well, this is the third time I've failed to complete a PyWeek game, and I've only myself to blame.

I really need to learn the lesson of starting with a minimal, playable core game and expanding on it, rather than assuming I'll have time for finishing features X,Y, and Z and then finding at the end of the week that my game isn't playable because Z is only half-done.

Next time I'll plan things out better.

I am sooooo annoyed right now I finished everything in the last minute except for one thing: when you press the instructions button it prints to a terminal >.<
Ah well hopefully i'll do better this time, I'll upload a fixed file to some other website and post it here tomorrow, cause its kinda cheating changing my final release :/

Enjoy it.

Milker