I can't adequately put into words how much I've been looking forward to PyWeek this year. I was so excited about both the Mad Science and Secret Lair choices that I couldn't decide which to even vote for. I think, though, that this will turn out quite well.

This is my second PyWeek, and I learned a lot from the last one on what to do and what not to do. So far, I think I've had a pretty strong start.

My game is named "The Cure." Without going into too much of the plot, my game is about an unexpected outbreak resulting from a promising cancer cure. It's caused people to go out of their minds as they hallucinate and attack whoever wanders by. You're the scientist who worked on the new cancer drug, and it's you vs. the world now.

It's an overhead-style game, making use of variations of the First Seed Material graphics sets.

So far, I have a working game engine with camera controls, basic animation, level loading, a custom level editor, and very rough AI.

I can't believe how fast today has gone, but it's been a great start. I'm really excited for tomorrow :D

Once screenshots are unbroken on pyweek.org, I'll put something up.

The Cure is coming along nicely. Today's achievements include collision detection, a projectile weapon, improved AI for the infected, much improvements in the level editor (including undo, redo, and multiple spritesheets), and much of level 1.

I also finalized (I believe) the plot and gameplay mechanics.

This is largely going to be more about story telling than a super innovative game. Let's just get that out of the way. I think it'll be enjoyable, though. And just 3 levels, so no excuse not to finish.

I have screenshots up at http://imgur.com/a/WOEjJ. Right now, it seems more stable than PyWeek's screenshot uploading.

I've done quite a bit in the past few days, and have totally failed to blog about it.

I realized part-way in that the format for the game (going from point A to point B, with mobs in the way, level to level) wasn't working out. It just wasn't fun. The story was good, and it worked, but it needed... something.

I've decided to go more with an exploration model. There's now one big overworld with different regions, where things need to be retrieved. It's not as in-depth as Zelda or anything, and will be easy enough, but there's only so much one can do in a week :)

This feels a lot better. Except for the performance problems. The game slowed down quite a bit after putting together my level. It's 150x160 tiles at 64x64 pixels a tile, and there were a few problems with that. I worked on it all last night, and finally went to bed. When I woke up, I knew exactly what needed to be done.

Fast-forward about 30 minutes and the game is super speedy! Excellent.

Planning to finish the level today, start adding some more enemies to the game, and hopefully begin work on the ending scene.

There's a couple screenshots on here, and also on my imgur gallery.

It's.. let's see.. 5:20AM now. So it might be time to consider sleeping for a few hours.

I wrote the ending sequence for the game today. There are actually two endings, only one of which I've (mostly) completed. But all the stuff is there to do the other one, so it should'nt be bad.

I've been going through and adding detail to the main world. It's coming along well. Spent the past few hours on the mountains and volcano.

Tomorrow, adding some more enemies to the game, finishing the ending sequence, and if time permits, beginning the opening sequence.

Plenty of time for polish. The game is pretty rock solid :)

Wow, we're almost there. Kind of relieved :)

Today was productive. The entire ending sequence is finished. A couple new enemies have been added. Random mob spawning. Some animations.

What's left is some polishing, addition of music and sound effects, the opening introduction, and maybe credits.

I'd post more screenshots, but I'm too sleepy.

The last day of PyWeek, and I'm done! Sure there's probably a bit more polish I could do, but as I figure it, I've worked a bit over 100 hours this week on the game, and I'm mostly happy with it. At least, I accomplished my own goals, which is all I want out of this.

PyWeek, for me, is an opportunity to spend a week learning different skills from those I use at my day job. I write software for a living, but games are bit of a different breed. Getting out of my comfort zone for a week and learning how to write something new is well worth it to me. So, every year, I take off a week for one PyWeek and basically do nothing but code. It's exhausting at the end, but I haven't regretted it yet.

Honestly, I don't even care if anyone plays my game. To me, it's not about that. That said, I hope it works for people and I hope you enjoy it at least a bit :)