Before the coding starts

reidrac on 2011/09/04 07:49 of usebox.net
— edited on 2011/09/07 21:24

There are some things I need to do before next weekend:

Update: Post Research

I'd like to give py2exe a go, because I don't know how accessible will be the source code in Windows (I'm a Linux user and the only Windows box that I have at hand is an old laptop with Vista - not in use).

I think I have enough documentation about pygame and game mechanics to have a good start. My main concern is that my (limited) experience is with C and SDL, and there are some cool features in pygame that need a mind shift before I start using them (such as the Sprites class).

Besides that, I think I'll be able to adapt my plan to the theme, because it's quite open (still... Mutation! is my favourite!).

Finally I'm going to look for some free clip art and graphics. I left that out of the list, and after reading 3 or 4 tutorials with nice graphics, I'm now convinced that it was a bad idea ;)

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Comments

richard on 2011/09/04 09:18:

It's never been a requirement need to understand the meta-theme to understand the themes.

Hell, it's never been a requirement to understand the theme :-)

reidrac on 2011/09/04 14:47:

Good to know!

Anyway, everything would be easier if Mutation! wins. Go Mutation! Go!

dotteri on 2011/09/04 16:27:

I like Misterious Stranger theme :p, and with Mr. Fixit looks interesting.

saluk on 2011/09/06 05:05:

Yeah understanding fallout really isn't important. These themes are great all on their own! Sounds like you are doing some great pre-preparing here. Just don't wear yourself out with it before the real start starts :)

reidrac on 2011/09/06 16:20:

I want to try something I haven't done before, and that's probably a bad idea :)

I can spend about 40 hours coding next week (being optimistic, I'm not always productive after a workday), so I'm looking for any post, how to, tutorial, etc that can help me to have things as clear as possible in my head before starting writing a single line of code. I don't want to get stuck in some basic aspect of game mechanics (how to do scroll, hit detection, etc).

Besides that you need to know the specifics of the kind of game you want to implement. For example: if you want to write a 2.5D engine such Wolf3D, you better know all the raycasting theory!

I'm must confess I'm liking this preparation week. I'm having lots of ideas and I'm reading interesting stuff otherwise I wouldn't have read (you know when you start writing code too early, happens to me every time!).

Anyway, I see PyWeek as a good opportunity to learn new things and bootstrap a game project. I know the result will be more or less crappy (I suck at graphics, and creativity can be a time-waster), but may be I'll get to a point where it's worth to keep working after the contest. Who knows? ;)

saluk on 2011/09/06 18:03:

Hope for less rather than more crappy :) Personally I use these more as a design challenge than an actual competition. I'm more interested in seeing what weird ideas I can come up with, and then testing to see if there is any merit at all to them via the implementation; rather than trying to actually build something that will last.

I'm curious what you are aiming towards. For example, are you planning to write a 2.5d engine such as wolf3d :) You mentioned it, hehe. Software rendering is so cool.

I agree, reading and researching are invaluable tools, all too often if I try something on my own I will miss the easy solution to a problem and cobble together the most confusing and error-prone one.