Response to comments
Cosmologicon on 2009/05/17 03:35
of Universe Factory 8
This entry exceeded expectations: I didn't expect first place by a long shot. Thanks so much to everyone who played the game. Congratulations to the other high scorers! I'm especially surprised to do well because I found the individual competition particularly strong this time: pymike, syntaxglitch, cyhawk, and gcewing all made amazing entries. Be sure to check them out if you haven't yet. I don't think I'll be able to pull this off again, so I look forward to losing to them next time! :-)
I hope to work on this game some more! All further developments will appear on the Pyggy page.
Now for response to comments. First: bugs. It's apparently possible to lock up the game, which is something I never saw. The lesson here is: try as hard as you can to break your own game. Jam keys, click wildly everywhere, whatever it takes. Also, the game crashed for one person who must have had an older version of pygame; I used a feature new in 1.8.0. I'll be sure to make it check for the version and output a more helpful error.
Show covered area any time you click the 'Build Star Plant' wouldn't be better ?
That's how it is now. Maybe you meant, show it all the time? I'm not sure what's best.
I found it quite boring to be honest
Didn't seem to be an object to the game or any conflict.
it would have been nice to make more use out of things like the cannon
the (last?) level is too hard - The on ewith the UFO attacking your main-plant.
All true. I feel like I have a lot of work to do as far as the level design goes to make this a fun game. I hope to have some rich strategy by the time I'm done, but I think it's going to be a lot of work, as I said in my last diary entry.
Also, the autobuild type function for the starflowers was nice but it would have been good to have something similar for fertilizing.
Spot on. If you look in the code, you'll see that this was half-implemented and triaged.
Ah great, I was adding the ending last-minute, and I'm glad I decided not to drop it. (You can tell the ending screen was shoddily drawn.) But I feel like the ending makes the whole rest of the story worthwhile. Plus, the title foreshadows it, if you know what "pan" means, and how often do you get to use foreshadowing in PyWeek? :-)fantastic ending
Nice ending
wonderful, except... the very end.
In response to all the positive comments: thank you! I'll leave it at that.
Thanks again to richard, the community, and all the judges! See you in PyWeek 9!
(log in to comment)
> I feel like I have a lot of work to do as far as the level design goes to make this a fun game.
It's already a fun game, as most of the ratings said! (Though UI tweaks like autofertilize could make it much easier on the fingers.) Be careful about adding complexity to the levels -- it might reduce some of the charm.
(For my young son, level 3 was hardest, and frustrating, since it eventually becomes impossible to win. He didn't really mind though, he just played the other levels.)
Comments
oresmus on
2009/05/17 07:27:
claxo on
2009/05/17 14:40:
I was refering to this: if you select a seed first and then press the button 'Build Star Plant', then the covered area is not shown. I would say that is exactly the time you want that info.
cyhawk on
2009/05/17 06:59:
Congratulations! I loved this game since I saw the first acorn jumping around in an early release :).I think the judge who wrote "Show covered area any time you click the 'Build Star Plant' wouldn't be better ?" may mean that currently a bit confusingly it is not the covered area that is displayed, but the area that will be covered when every construction is finished. I think you should probably graphically distinguish the area covered by already-built plants and that covered by future plants to solve this confusion.
I don't know how the last level is difficult. I found it particularly easy, because the UFO actually helps you. You do not have to take care to place the plants to maximize coverage, just build them close to the center and let the UFO uniformly distribute them!