Time is ticking on. The plan is to make a bus driving simulation - driving Route 6 on a public transport network - with some kind of game aspect as yet undecided! I'd better come up with something soon...

Fun things from today were arranging the bus so that it stays stuck to the road, and making a pseudo engine model with sound effects for the bus.

And here is where it becomes clear that I hadn't thought this through very well...

I've made a basic (read: semi-functional, not terribly realistic) 2D side scroller bus driving simulation, complete with "passengers". The real question is: what next? How do I turn this into an actual game? Should I focus on making the simulation core more playable? What about levels or incorporating real life routes?

I've played around with a few ideas but none of the attempts enthused me, so I'm calling it quits for now. The basic game is in place - you can drive a bus around! there is a scoring mechanism! - although the bus model could be improved.

I looked at parallax rendering (there is a "refactor" branch with some experiments) but decided that it didn't really add enough to justify inclusion as it was. Making the people move in a more interesting fashion is in the same boat, as was adding more objects on the display. There were things I could do to improve the visuals but fundamentally not much that would actually add to the play value... or that I thought was worthwhile coding up.

I did particularly enjoy mucking around with the bus model and randomly generated path, and the little bits of drawing (for the bus stop and sign, the bus and audio were online, see git log for links).

Would I participate in another pyweek? Perhaps, but I'd probably focus on something with more opportunities for interesting mechanics, and it might depend a bit on the theme choice - I thought 6 was a little tricky.