Fishing Frenzy

PyGameSF Entry for the September 2008 pyweek competion. Team members: Casey Duncan, Colin Bean, Eric Bieschke, Harry Tormey.

Tools/Libraries

-Pyglet graphics, sprites, display, game

-Inkscape

-GIMP

-Vim, because it is awesome (settings et shiftwidth=4 set tabstop=4 set autoindent)

Concept

The concept of the game is that you play a fisherman sitting in a dinghy casting a line to catch fish swimming below. The viewport shows the boat in the top left corner with a fisherman sitting on top of it (top 20%) the rest of the screen shows a below surface view with fish and various objects. Casting is done by clicking one of the mouse buttons and moving the mouse about in a set arch. Moving the mouse causes the fisherman to move his rod up and down and causes the hook and line to swing back and forth The faster you move the mouse, the more velocity the swing has. Letting go of the button at any time casts, the line goes forward at the selected angle/speed.

Once the cast has been made the hook flies through the air and eventually hits the water and begins to sink beneath the surface. The water is full of layers of various moving objects which you need to avoid in order to try and catch what you wanted. You can control the speed of decent/ascent (reeling the line in/out) using the mouse or mouse wheel.

The objects in the layers only interact with the hook, they pass through the line (string) most of the time. But there may be fish with scissors that can cut it (eat through the line?), etc.

Score is influenced by the speed of catching fish, the number of fish caught and not dying.

The types of objects you can encounter are: Fridges, reeds/seaweed, submarines/ships, Televisions, shopping carts, other larger fishes/monsters (squids/octopus).

The fisherman can select various things to attach to his line such as large hooks, hooks with bait, dynamite or weights (makes line descend faster).

- submarine or some ship could come by and obscure the fish. These can be blown out of the way with dynamite.

- Fridges/Tvs can be pulled out of the way with large hooks.

- Larger fishes or crustaceans can eat/cut through your lines and cut off your bait, delaying you by making you cast again.

- Reeds/seaweed can snag your hook, causing you to have to wriggle free wasting time (i.e, scroll wheel move mouse).

- Larger fish can cut your line or if they eat your line drag you into the sea and kill you.

- Explosives can wake up octopuses which will come up and drag you in and kill you.

The game dynamic of the moving objects is inspired by the classic game frogger where: "The lower half of the screen contains a road with motor vehicles, which in various versions include cars, trucks, buses, taxis, bicyclists, and/or motorcycles, speeding along it horizontally." and "the player must successfully guide the frog between opposing lanes of trucks, cars, and other vehicles, to avoid becoming roadkill."

Apart from frogger other notable game dynamics include the use of a string line/hook to manipulate objects.

Screen shot

The game is starting to really taking shape with the addition of a working casting system. Moving the mouse while holding a button causes the the fishing rod to move backwards and forwards bending slightly while the fishing line and hook swing round. Letting go causes the hook to sink to the bottom in a believable manor. The fish are now animated and the game has some excellent in game music, including win/lose sounds. Their is still a lot of work to be done but things are looking good.

More new features added:

-New ship, the SS Busan, which moves around the screen. Will eventually start dropping random junk like oil barrels into the sea.

-Brilliant New animated 3d fish graphics as well as new eel sprite graphics.

-Fish now spawn randomly in multiple waves going in either direction.

-Pause function added. Press space bar to pause.

Their is a lot of work to do before the game is fully playable but we are making great progress towards this goal.

A major milestone was crossed yesterday, with the addition of collision detection and animation to handle fish being caught the game is now semi playable. Soon we will upload a snapshot and ask for feedback.

New Features:

-Added new sounds for The SS Busan.

-SS Busan 3d tire graphics added

-SS Busan, now ejects tires which float then drop to the bottom of the sea

-The hook can collide with the ejected tires on the bottom of the sea.

-Collision detection system added. The hook can now collide with fish/tires

-New fish animation, when fish get caught they get pulled into the boat.

-Improved random fish spawning.

-A number of minor performance tweaks.

Fishing frenzy really started to take shape in the wee hours this morning, but there were still lots of loose ends, for example: no way to win or lose, no score, just some fish and our humble hero (who at least showed his face today for the first time) with pole at the ready.

Everyone on the team really kicked it up a notch for the last few hours, seeing what needed doing and stepping up and banging it out. Kudos to Colin for a great swimming animation dynamic, and for stepping up at the last minute to get the timer implemented. Eric was our man of sound, without him the game would basically be silent, which it definitely is not! Harry did an outstanding job documenting and keeping the tasks straight, and documenting it all for posterity. I won't bother to thank myself, I already know how awesome I am! ;^)

Of course, some things were cut due to constraints, I plan to circle back around add some of these features in the future, and I know Harry is very eager to see some of these get picked up off the cutting room floor:

• A proper title screen with menus
• More underwater creatures (octopus, etc)
• Floating seaweed that snags your line.
• A visible sea floor with things like sea grass and coral
• More varied debris, like oil drums, whiskey bottles, etc.
• A tutorial system of some kind
• Multiple levels of play
• Massively multiplayer fishing freneticism (just seeing if your paying attention! ;^)

All in all I'm very happy to have participated (if perhaps a little delirious) and this game would never have existed had it not been for pyweek and Harry's urging to get a team together. Cheers and enjoy the game!

-Casey