I am pondering what kinda of game to make and how to fit "mutation" into the equation. I have a weak idea but I'll continue building upon it. If anything, there ought to be lasers and radioactivity!

Some progress exists, I have a somewhat solid game concept, the theme for this couldn't have been worse for me, since I am extremely horrible at drawing, so... I'll work around it, after all, its the game makers interpretation of the theme that is exciting!

Furthermore, as someone who writes mostly Assembly and C code, I have realized I do not really have a clue about good coding guidelines/styles for Python. :(

So this is, a blurred screenshot thumbnail of my game at an early stage. Today I am focusing on the code, getting all bits together, this means rewriting large portions of what I made up until today and earlier today and implementing the lessons I learned from the first draft etc.

I am excited about the story of my game, while its far from perfect, I really got the mutation part down. I'll see how far I'll make it today, hopefully tomorrow I can focus on audio and story, and spend the rest of the time on making the game solid. :)

So, I currently have 2 version of my game:

Version 1:

Written like I would've written a C program, this version I mostly worked on yesterday, this version actually works fine, of course there is several things that would need fixes and adjustments, as well as more features

Version 2:

This version is written some sort of OOP fashion, sorta like how I expect a Python program to be written if it was written OOP-style (+ my own touch of failure in terms of my lacking Python knowledge). This version has major issues, mainly because, since I already had a working version from the days before, I pasted a lot of code from my previous version, and that has led to several major bugs, and design flaws.

When I rewrite code, its not as fun to write it the second time, and I get stuck in the mindset that I used when writing my first version, which is bad, and its only 3 days left of the challenge, I will have to start to really work my way through this, it is moderately stressful. So I decided I really do not have a choice, I will have to rewrite my game one more time.

I will be throwing away thousands of lines of code. And start over. Luckily my story and my artwork is there, no change in concept is present.

:(

I slept on it, and I realized that the OOP-style of writing code in Python is still too unfamiliar for me, I would need to read up on several concepts that seem to differ from C++, I don't like to guess when I am coding.

So, it will be a rewrite today, I will focus on the logic first, then I move onto the graphics and I/O. If I do not have a working game draft 14 hours from now, I will use my first draft and build on that. I will be a major disappointment for me to do that, but I'd at least have something to show.

Due to me not being happy with the overall quality of my code, as well as the stress added as the deadline approaches, I have no other option than to resign.

However, I grew quite fond of the story of my game, as well as the isometric style I utilized in my game, I will with any doubt continue developing my game, I will add multiplayer elements, map editors, and artwork. However, that will be a 100% reboot, I won't be using Python.

This contest has got me more interested in Python in general, it seems much more capable than I originally thought, and it gives a lot of options as how to write code, the Python utilities and libs is in the thousands as I count from my repository:

madnick@northpole:~$ aptitude search python | wc -l
2726

That is quite impressive.

Here is some screenshots of my game:



So what was the story of my game?

"At the dawn of mankind... We arose the interest of several advanced alien civilizations
However, they could not agree about how to intervene with mankind. "How can we shape mankind", was the question on everybody's lips.
An agreement was nowhere to be found, so in order to save time, they all sent mutation probes, known as Monoliths, to stand by, while awaiting a conclusion.
However, a species known as the Himus, would not await any conclusion, they sent their own probes, not with good intent, but with malice. For they were determined to shape mankind into their own slave species.
At the peak of events, a great battle was fought through out the continent of Africa, for the sake of mankind's continued development. "

So in my game, the different colors of Monoliths is sent by different civilizations (a small reference to "2001: A space odyssey") The smaller Monoliths are the "Himus" they are an aggressive species however not as powerful as the others, but due to their planetary resources, they can build a large amount of Monoliths, whilst they are harmless to other Monoliths, they are not harmless to a young mankind, they will mutate mankind for their own purposes. Other monoliths will simply waste energy on these Himu-monoliths in order to destory them, if a Himu-monolith goes off the map, well, they all loose HP, because of how much resources they've wasted.

..

So thats it for me! I wish all you others the best of luck!