Using Pygame, Humerus, and Albow I was able to quickly (~3hrs) get some of the ground work for the mutation game mechanic coded. There is not much on the screen except some debug text and buttons, but I hope to have a screenshot of a ruff version of Mutate! up tomorrow. 

 So far I am having a blast with pyweek!

  

It was a long day of coding, yet I still did not seem to accomplish as much as I had hoped. Here is a screenshot of the game so far:


  
The graphics are just place holders. The ugly looking circles and rectangles are flowers which will hopefully be replaced with pixel art once the gameplay is hammered out. This is more of just a test of the flower DNA mutations.

The idea behind "Mutate!" is that the player can mutate the nucleotides in the DNA of flowers on a distant planet each generation (this game is by no means scientifically correct). The DNA is made up of the color elements RGB that change the flowers color, size and shape. The challenge will be in mutating the DNA of the flower to survive the changing environmental conditions on the planet. These conditions are also based on color so different color suns or rains will have different effects. There will be a seven day forecast of the conditions of the planet so that the player can strategize and prepare for the coming days. The end goal is to have a certain number of plants surviving or take up the majority of the land, but I will need to playtest to make sure this is actually fun.

I am calling it a night. I have to work in the morning.

 

Not the most productive day since I had to work for most of it, but I did get some features half implemented like the forecast and rain effect. I found a quick and easy particle system in Ian Mallett's PAdLib which I'll use for the rain effect.

I am really resisting the urge to redo all the crappy looking graphics, but without the gameplay being fun yet I will have to stick with them. 

Today was a good day for the design of the game. The first few days the design was kinda of nebulous. I had a ruff idea of elements I wanted to include, but the game as a cohesive whole was not yet formed in my mind. That all changed today with hopefully enough time to code it all by the end of the pyweek. 

 I solidified a gameplay loop with an actual ending condition and a goal. Here is what I came up with (It probably won't make a lot of sense to anyone else, but oh well): 
Pseudo Code

GAMEPLAY:
  Player starts with one plant
  Computer rival also starts with one plant

  While not END_CONDITION:
    Change DNA (Gene 1: Bloom color, 
Gene 2: Color Sun Bonus, 
Gene 3: Color Rain Bonus, 
Gene 4: Reproduction Bonus if pollinated)
    ACTION: Rotate DNA Left, Rotate DNA Right, Cross DNA, Random Mutate DNA
    One new plant is spawned for each player
    Random Color Bug pollinates (seeks biggest bloom of same color) + Bonus from DNA
    Day Changes
    Weather effect happens ( Sun +/- bloom + Bonus, Rain +/- plant Size + Bonus)
    if bloom or size too small 
    then plant dies

END CONDTION:
    All slots filled on the land

WINNER:     
  Most plants wins! 

Tonight, I spend most of my time hunting a pesky bug related to using class attributes instead of instance attributes in my classes. Since I am fairly new to python the distinction wasn't clear to me. It was hard to track down since everything was working beautifully until I made the slightest of change.

As for progress, the gameplay is inching its way forward little by little. I am going to hold off on any screen shots until I can replace the graphics (scheduled to be done Friday).