Just checked the game entry form, and since it was working, I was able to register my PyWeek entry - yay :)

Quick overview of what I have in mind: A simple, retro FPS (kind of like Doom), but still heavily simplified - 2-3 enemy types, 1 weapon (maybe 2), no jumping, and completely indoor levels. I'm going to try get the artwork out of the way early, since that's what I'm worst at.

I have most of the artwork finished (but no code written) - I'll upload screenies in a later diary entry.

P.S: My entry is up on GitHub at https://github.com/DangerOnTheRanger/alias - follow it! :)

Time for some screenshots!

The artwork for Alias is almost finished, and I still haven't written any code - though that's on purpose; coding is my strongest asset, so I'm getting the tougher stuff out of the way first. :)

Anyway, here we go:

Here's pictures of two of the (as-of-yet untextured) corridor pieces Alias' maps will be made with, baked ambient occlusion and all:




Here's one of the enemies (yes, I know it looks like a soccerball :P):



I'll post more screenshots as more artwork is finished.

I've taken the previous 5 days to make artwork, flesh out gameplay mechanics, and put my entry on GitHub. Now it's time to code...

I know, I know - coding, testing, and packaging on the last 2 days sounds risky - it probably is, to a certain extent. However, I'm alleviating most of the risk by packaging the game as flat source (no premade executables),and using as much pre-written code as possible (I won't be writing anything besides level-loading and level logic, hopefully).

Still there is obvious risk to this approach - I should be able to finish by the deadline, but disasters could happen...

With less than 15 minutes to spare, I pushed the final revision of Alias to PyWeek (plus an in-game screenshot). Now all I can do is wait for the judging...

I didn't get to accomplish all the things I set out to accomplish (multiple enemies, multiple levels, some other stuff), but hey, it was a good learning experience. And, I had a lot of fun in the process (not to mention one all-nighter) - you can't beat that. :) I learned how to UV map Blender models, bake ambient occlusion into a texture, use Panda3D's collision detection, use PandAI (though it's quite buggy, unfortunately), and I re-learned Git.

If I could have done things differently, I would have made a complete FPS engine and released and used that before the competition began, and spent the week drawing art and writing glue code. I also would have learned how to use Blender before the competition started, instead of learning on-the-fly. Other than that, the only thing I wish I could have had is more time. :)

All in all though, it was a great experience participating in PyWeek 14 - I can't wait for PyWeek 15!