And so, my time runs out.

Zim the Fox on 2013/04/20 06:56

This week has been a week of firsts. My first PyWeek, my first game and my first big programming project that ever got close to being finished. And I'll finish it! The bones of the game are close to being done, just need to add some meat and skin. I can't wait for the next competition! And I will be at Ludum Dare as well.

I've had to deal with many troubles I had never faced, and a Programmer's Block that lasted for two days but I think I did a great job and implemented some fancy tricks. Anyway, it's late and I'll go rest. I'll update this post with more info and a video tomorrow if anybody is interested, and here is my repo:
https://bitbucket.org/Zim_the_Fox/nemesis

Good luck to everyone! I can't wait to try out your games.

Simon Echeverri /
Zim the Fox

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Zim the Fox on 2013/04/24 06:48:

24/04/2013

Wheeeee, I'm late for this. I have been rather distracted. Anyway, here is a video of my game, which lags and is very quiet and terribly done (I'm sorry): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyU7_DsSBk8

And here is my post mortem:

The previous week was a week of hard work. Of getting out of bed in the middle of the night to scribble down ideas and coding until I was so tired I could only see gibberish in the screen. I got to familiarise myself with the logic behind a game which is one of the hardest parts of making a game for me, besides physics. I simply don't like any of the physics engines available in Python and I have no idea how to make my own.

My project was Nemesis, a bullet hell shooter. In these kind of games you command a ship and you have to destroy your enemies as they swarm you with bullets. The game would decrease the score multiplier rather than kill the player if they got hit, taking away the frustration of losing and having to repeat the level. However, getting hit too many times would restart the level.

The main game mechanic of Nemesis was the ability to either slow things down and sacrifice half of your score, the blessing of time and patience, or speed things up and duplicate your score, the curse of haste. The idea was to tie the mechanics of the game to Greek mythology, so the blessing of time could be the blessing of Chronos. I plan to eventually expand this mechanic to allow you to use different kinds of bonuses and power-ups.

On the programming side of things, I implemented the ability to have multiple levels. Each level automatically loads level-independent assets (like different monster sprites) or assets shared by all the levels, and it spawns monsters according to a sequence in chronological order. Each monster has a sequence of paths to follow and a sequence of bullet patterns to use. The structure of the game is solid and allows for the easy creation of new levels and enemies. The enemy paths are constructed as functions that return a velocity for each time t; once you figure what path, as a function of time, you want the enemy to take, you find its derivative over time and use that in the game.

Perchance the most important thing about this experience is that I learn how to work with myself. It seems it is near impossible for me to work unless I have a deadline heading towards me.

Thank you for reading and I'd appreciate your comments <3

I'll be playing your games and I'll try to make a post of my favourites!

Simon Echeverri /

Zim the Fox

https://bitbucket.org/Zim_the_Fox/nemesis