Post-Mortem
Cthulhu32 on 2006/09/25 23:42
of Urban Ninja
I had a really good time with this contest. Everyone on #pyweek was entertaining to chat with, lots of good discussions and helping ideas for my game. I was happy to see my input got into Richards game (digging to avoid the farmer! :) )
Overall Progress
I made A LOT of progress from where I stood as a programmer and a game developer last year. I ranked last on everything but production last year, and made a personal goal to get at least 5th place. Writing this game I learned so much about not only coding, but how I code and my quick and dirty insane style. There were so many cool things I learned over the course of pyweek.
Overall Coding
Even now I can see how my code is going to improve in the future. I had never created a "reaction" style game like this where objects within a map have to react with other objects. So for instance, I had to have the bullets check to see if they had collided with the player's sprite box, so I had to grab how much damage the bullet would do and pass it onto my player. Then my player had to make sure to update based on that.
My python/pygame coding has improved ten-fold. I learned how to actually seperate classes into different files, organize my code, use imports to save my ass. Still need to learn something about debugging.
Overall Artwork
Crap my sprite style is improving! I haven't done any 2D art in forever, so getting all those little baddies was very fun. The problem is I spend way too much time having fun drawing the little 2d sprites. I was going to have lots of animations but ran out of time. I made the dogs the night before.
Last thoughts
This contest was a blast. Drawing, coding, planning, chatting, more coding, last minute insanity. Great stuff! I was working down to the last 5 minutes (which Richard wasn't too happy about, but thankfully opened up my uploads agai n after the timer.)
The people here were awesome, it was so cool to see everyone's betas. I know this is going to be great if I actually apply for a game job here in Seattle. I would love to do another one of these as long as I have the time to do it (not during college finals.) LD48 is still a bit too intimidating for me, but I'd love another pyweek. Maybe a christmas style one?
Post-Release?
YES! I will be working on a post release, a lot of it is going to be making new enemies, improving AI, add A LOT more animations, fix the gameplay a bit, add more weapons, fix the shadows so they don't slow down the program, fix the teleporters so you know where you're going to go (maybe make them glow when you're over one), LOTS of other ideas. If anyone wants to throw out comments/suggestions for my game feel free, I'd love to hear em.
Thanks again Richard for hosting this, and everyone else for judging my game!
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Comments
gcewing on
2006/09/26 05:01:
> I'll be running an off-season challenge near December / January.
If you're planning anything around then, it would be nice if you could take into account that in the southern hemisphere we have our main holidays (vacations) for the year around Christmas. In my case it would be have to be in the first 3 weeks or so of December if I were to be able to participate.
richard on
2006/09/26 07:23:
I was thinking around mid-January, even though it'll be stinking hot (this is why I run the challenge in Spring / Autumn).
Early December is right out as I'm the Program Chair for OSDC (and I'm also giving a couple of presentations). I'll be wanting December to be A Month Of Rest.
fydo on
2006/09/26 21:18:
I would LOVE to participate in another pygame-related challenge in December / January (I'd prefer January)
Also, I find it very impressive that you are the Program Chair for OSDC, richard. Cool stuff! I'd love to attend, but I'm on the other side of the world (Alberta, Canada). :)
donal.h on
2006/09/26 21:30:
richard on
2006/09/26 03:29:
Great wrap-up. I should write one too... ;)I'll be running an off-season challenge near December / January. I'm not sure what the format will be, but it'll be run like the pygame.draw one was - very laid-back :)