Well, we have two ideas, and we are currently discussing pros and cons. One of them seems funny and original, the other one is pretty and funny. We will inform as soon as possible! :)

Well, it's been a pretty fast start this time! Something I learned from the previous Pyweek is having a game idea for each theme, or at least for those I liked most, so I can start coding as soon as possible!

This time, I'm lucky to work with a friend and a great artist who will draw and compose while I code as fast as I can. His sketches are inspiring, but the final artwork is simply stunning. Take a look at his website , if you wish to know more about him.

Well, the game idea was quite clear from the beginning: you control a Lawn Fairy who must prevent bugs from eating grass blades (and flowers, if we have enough time!). However, you can only fight against them blowing. That way, grass blades shake and bugs fall from them.

Yesterday, I managed to hack together a simple menu and some code from my previous pyweek entry (there's one screenshot showing some early blades with guys on top of them) as a technical demo. It seemed to work, so I went on today working with grass blades and some crude player movement. They already move as I expected, so I guess we can be happy!

But there are still many many things to do. Bugs, grass evolution (growing and flowers), blowing mechanic, scores, animations, sound... well, the whole game X)

I just don't know what's happening. If I draw a 800x600 background image and the grass blades, the FPS counter goes down to 15. It's just that combination. If I just draw the grass or I just draw the background, I get more than 30fps.

All that while the player and more than 50 bugs move around. But it has nothing to do with them!

Player+bugs+background -> 30fps.
Player+bugs+grass -> 30fps
Player+bugs+background+grass -> 15fps 8(

I've fighting all day against that. There's something in pyglet batches and OpenGL that I just don't get. GRRRR!

Nothing much was accomplished today :(

Well, it's been though! I've had some problems with frame rates, but I think I've managed to keep things simple. However, I fear you'll need a good machine to move this properly!

Although I couldn't do much yesterday, I managed to get some good looking grass blades using OpenGL. While I fought against my own code, Kokoro created some beautiful sprites and an incredible background!

Today, I put all that together. The fairy is an animated sprite, there are bugs that are able to climb blades, and you can blow to create wind! Wind shakes blades and bugs move with them, so it all starts looking quite good.

Next step: three different bugs, eating mechanism (bugs kill blades if they eat them), complete blowing mechanism (that is, being able to knock down bugs with your blow) and complete sprites. More than enough for tomorrow!

AAAGH! It seems our watches were 15min. slow (but ALL our watches: two laptops and a desktop), and we are trying a last minute upload.

We hope there are no problems for our entry to be judged, because we are truly sending this in time! Problem is, it's like 12Mb and it seems it's taking quite a lot of time! Too much indeed! :(

Just in case, we are also sending an email to Richard (richard@pyweek.org) Pleasepleaseplease forgive us and let us in! It's cold outside! :(

Well, we are really sorry, but it was not until yesterday when we added background music and sounds... and uploaded in the last minute.

It was this morning when we found a handful of bugs that prevent our game from working in Linux and Mac... agh.

- Sound file paths are written for Windows (\\ instead of /), so no sound files are found in Unix systems and thus it does not work.
- When fixing paths, some errors are thrown when exiting the game. It's something about deallocating sound memory...
- I just do not get why, but the score text, which uses the same font as the main menu, does not work in linux (squares are drawn instead). It does work if I use Arial, however.
- Some strange flicker with some graphic cards. That's something I don't like of Pyglet! (although I guess it's more a hardware issue).

As we are quite happy with our work and Kokoro has done an impressive work both with graphics and sound (you HAVE TO hear that soundtrack!), we really want to release the game for Linux and Mac. We will fix it as soon as possible!

Well, I did not have Internet at home yesterday, so I had to upload a multiplatform version and a windows (exe) version today, which include some minor bug fixes (and this is not a pun!)

I know it's two days after the deadline, so feel free to judge the first version. It's almost identical, but it does not work on Linux or Mac and difficulty is not adjusted. Everything else is exactly the same, but it now works on any platform and difficulty increases with time. Please, at least play the multiplatform version once! We really would like people to try our game and receive some feedback.

I -must-, once again, thank Kokoro for his sprites, sound effects... and that incredible soundtrack. I just love how it sounds!

Well, now it's time to play everything else! Good luck!

Some known issues in Lawn Fairy:

1) If you go back to the main menu and start a new game... there will be only one ant. No more bugs will appear! You have to quit ant re-start the game. Sorry!

2) It seems that it frame rate drops too much suddenly (due to a program running in background, for example), strange things may happen. But it works properly if your computer manages to keep a constant frame rate.

3) That strange flicker is still there in some computers. No idea how to fix that.

4) When exiting, I get an error from media.Player objects. Something about something not being deleted properly. I'm asking this one in pyglet.org.

And probable, many more surprises are on the way! :)

Sorry for re-posting this video. I just realized I added it as a message, instead of a Diary Entry... I just wanted to have everything together :)