The Last Thing I Do
The original idea: a side-scrolling brawler resembling something like Castle Crashers. The nemesis theme was supposed to come in as a character that would appear to randomly affect the game, whether that be by throwing bombs or buffing up monsters.
I'm a university student in a Computer Science degree participating in my first game jam.
The submission is nowhere close to the original vision and can hardly even be called a game (it's more of a toy really). I didn't get to the nemesis bit either, so the submission probably should be disqualified.
Regardless, I participated in PyWeek 16 in hopes of having fun and learning something, and I think that definitely happened.
Awards
Scores
Ratings (show detail)
Overall: 1.6
Fun: 1.7
Production: 1.4
Innovation: 1.7
Files
| File | Uploader | Date |
|---|---|---|
|
lastthing_pyweek16.zip
— final
Final submission. Requires python 2.7, pygame and pybox2d to run. |
Mizzinx | 2013/04/20 14:58 |
Diary Entries
Three and a half days left?
Mizzinx on 2013-04-17 15:33
Well that flew by quickly. I didn't get to work on my game much (well, at all, really) this week due to uni, but I've started to make some progress. Since this is my first diary entry, I guess I'll explain what I'm doing.
My game is called "The Last Thing I Do" (I have terrible naming sense), and it's a beat-em-up/brawler where you control a hero storming your nemesis's castle. In my mind it would have gameplay similar to the old beat-em-ups like Double Dragon, or the more recent Castle Crashers. It's distinctly room-by-room, as in you walk into one room, kill everything, then continue to the next. For the nemesis theme, I want a nemsis character to randomly appear during rooms to mess with the situation by casting spells; sometimes he'll throw fireballs, summon more monsters, buff up existing monsters, etc. In addition to that, I originally wanted the nemesis to actually appear as a boss battle (that the player is expected to lose, but weaken the nemesis with each fight) every few rooms, but I'm almost certain I won't be able to do that with the time I have left.
For this entry, I decided that I really didn't want to code a physics engine myself, so I went off to learn how to use (py)Box2D. That ended up being more of a struggle than expected, so I don't know if this alternative was any better as learning it + coding it into my game ate a total of about two to four hours of my time.
So what I have now is the following:
It's probably impossible to interpret what the hell is going on, so let me explain.
The red boxes are the game's entities, one of them being linked to the player. WASD lets the player move around, and the boxes can collide with each other (currently they end up just pushing each other around).
That wierd gray bit is the map constructed by a simple tile engine, which the boxes cannot leave. The background is green because why not.
As that screenshot shows, the game is WAY far from finished. I still have uni tomorrow so I don't think I'll get much done then, but I have both Friday and Saturday free. I think PyWeek ends on 10am Sunday for me, so perhaps if I pull some all-nighters the end result will actually look like a game.
My game is called "The Last Thing I Do" (I have terrible naming sense), and it's a beat-em-up/brawler where you control a hero storming your nemesis's castle. In my mind it would have gameplay similar to the old beat-em-ups like Double Dragon, or the more recent Castle Crashers. It's distinctly room-by-room, as in you walk into one room, kill everything, then continue to the next. For the nemesis theme, I want a nemsis character to randomly appear during rooms to mess with the situation by casting spells; sometimes he'll throw fireballs, summon more monsters, buff up existing monsters, etc. In addition to that, I originally wanted the nemesis to actually appear as a boss battle (that the player is expected to lose, but weaken the nemesis with each fight) every few rooms, but I'm almost certain I won't be able to do that with the time I have left.
For this entry, I decided that I really didn't want to code a physics engine myself, so I went off to learn how to use (py)Box2D. That ended up being more of a struggle than expected, so I don't know if this alternative was any better as learning it + coding it into my game ate a total of about two to four hours of my time.
So what I have now is the following:
It's probably impossible to interpret what the hell is going on, so let me explain.
The red boxes are the game's entities, one of them being linked to the player. WASD lets the player move around, and the boxes can collide with each other (currently they end up just pushing each other around).
That wierd gray bit is the map constructed by a simple tile engine, which the boxes cannot leave. The background is green because why not.
As that screenshot shows, the game is WAY far from finished. I still have uni tomorrow so I don't think I'll get much done then, but I have both Friday and Saturday free. I think PyWeek ends on 10am Sunday for me, so perhaps if I pull some all-nighters the end result will actually look like a game.
One More Day
Mizzinx on 2013-04-19 15:38
A decent amount of progress today, but from the looks of it I won't end up with something that resembles a game by the end of this. So far I basically have a top-down toy where enemies spawn and run into you until you die. You can click to "swing" a sword (I gave up on making b2RevoluteJoint work for now, so it doesn't actually swing yet...) to defend yourself. The graphics are just a whole bunch of flat rectangles, and there's no such thing as a UI. Definitely doesn't resemble a game.
I think I'm struggling a way more than I should be with Box2D, and that's taking a lot of time. Looking back, it would have probably been wiser to go with a more abstract game so I'd spend more time working on actual game mechanics instead of figuring out how to use that library.
Despite all that, I feel like I'm learning quite a lot from this experience. The end result is guaranteed to be terrible, but I've definitely had fun. I think I've spent a total of ~8 hours on this so far, and I'm looking forward to seeing how much I can hack together before the deadline.
I think I'm struggling a way more than I should be with Box2D, and that's taking a lot of time. Looking back, it would have probably been wiser to go with a more abstract game so I'd spend more time working on actual game mechanics instead of figuring out how to use that library.
Despite all that, I feel like I'm learning quite a lot from this experience. The end result is guaranteed to be terrible, but I've definitely had fun. I think I've spent a total of ~8 hours on this so far, and I'm looking forward to seeing how much I can hack together before the deadline.