Rethinking what I think of my project

HanClinto on 2007/04/11 02:35 of LastMinuteFrivolities

(Top note for those not wanting to read through the entire post, there is a updated version of my game Slacker, where it now offers continuous play rather than quitting after every play)

Right after I finished creating my game, I was pretty happy with everything and couldn't think of anything that I didn't like about the project.

However, after playing through around half of the other games, I've realized just how good the other games are, and how little my game brings to the table.

So even though I'm pretty pleased with being able to create the game, there are some things I would have liked to change to make it better.

• I would have liked to package it for Mac and Windows, so that users don't need to have Python and Pygame installed.
• I would have liked to add some sound to engage the player and make it easier to time your key hits.
• I would have liked to make it so that the game doesn't exit when you lose, but rather restarts so that you can try again. That would help make it easier to play and deal with the frustration of the high difficulty level.
• I would have liked to add a more interesting reward for winning the game -- right now it feels kindof flat.
• It might have been nice to add different difficulty levels, but the way it runs right now feels *very* close to the real arcade game.

So yeah. It was a very fun exercise to write a complete game in just a few hours, but it was only possible by choosing such a well-scoped project. It's nice to take my own advice every once in a while though, and start small before working one's way up (after all, up is the only way ;) ).

I took a little bit of time to add one of the features that I've been wanting, which is continuous play that doesn't quit when you lose. You can download the updated version here.

P.S. -- I would appreciate it if anyone could give me tips on packaging the Skellington with py2exe and py2app -- I haven't been able to write setup.py scripts that recognized the required modules -- anyone have tips in this regard? Thanks!

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Comments

richard on 2007/04/11 04:47:

I'd also like to know of any recipes for packaging the Skellington with py2exe and py2app.