Cover image
pollen.
You can play the game with mouse or gamepad. The controls are simple: move the mouse or gamepad stick, and click the mouse, press shift or gamepad trigger to speed up.
Requires Python 3.7 or 3.8, plus the packages in requirements.txt. If you can't run from source, you can use the binary builds instead.
If you get a crash, edit settings.prc and comment out the threading-related lines, but the game will run a bit slower.
Many thanks to lordmauve and all the other PyWeek participants for a great challenge!
Awards
Scores
Ratings (show detail)
Overall: 3.8
Fun: 3.1
Production: 4.9
Innovation: 3.3
Files
| File | Uploader | Date |
|---|---|---|
|
cover.gif
Cover image |
rdb | 2020/03/29 17:39 |
|
screenshot-Sun-Mar-29-19-33-59-2020-2053.png
Final screenshot |
rdb | 2020/03/29 17:37 |
|
pollen-source.zip
— final
Final source code |
rdb | 2020/03/29 13:47 |
|
pollen-win64.zip
— final
Windows binaries (extract, then click run_game.exe) |
rdb | 2020/03/29 13:25 |
|
pollen-linux.zip
— final
Linux binaries |
rdb | 2020/03/29 12:35 |
|
pollen-macOS.zip
— final
macOS .app (click System Prefs, Security, Open Anyway) |
rdb | 2020/03/29 12:13 |
|
pollen-master.zip
— final
Snapshot of master at deadline. |
rdb | 2020/03/28 23:59 |
|
screenshot-Fri-Mar-27-22-15-05-2020-321.jpg
Screenshot with tone mapping disabled for comparison. |
rdb | 2020/03/27 21:18 |
|
screenshot-Fri-Mar-27-15-30-43-2020-385.jpg
Experimenting with a desaturation game mechanic |
rdb | 2020/03/27 14:32 |
|
screenshot-Thu-Mar-26-21-37-52-2020-376.jpg
Skybox, and colour adjustments |
rdb | 2020/03/26 20:39 |
|
screenshot-Thu-Mar-26-20-35-33-2020-615.jpg
Progress as of day 5 |
rdb | 2020/03/26 19:38 |
|
screenshot-Tue-Mar-24-23-32-57-2020-120.jpg
Progress as of day 3 |
rdb | 2020/03/24 22:35 |
|
movie-day2.mp4
Status after day 2 |
rdb | 2020/03/24 00:16 |
|
movie-day2.mp4
Status after day 2 |
rdb | 2020/03/24 00:16 |
Diary Entries
retrospective.
rdb on 2020-03-31 10:35
Well, this is it. Not what we intended it to be, but that's how these things go. We couldn't really come up with a good idea about the butterfly effect, so we instead chose to make a game about butterflies, taking inspiration from the PS3 game Flower.
As-is, the game has no failure state, so arguably isn't really a "game". The original plan was to have additional mechanics, such as being chased by a swarm of wasps, needing to avoid birds and spider webs, and having different flower colours give different effects. These were ultimately not implemented; I did not have much energy this week and felt overwhelmed with the challenge of implementing all those elements well. In the end, we decided to simply make this about introducing spring and "waking up" nature by having the vegetation come to life through the gameplay. Unfortunately, that means a lot of sound effects, models and animations ended up going unused. Some others, like the chase music, were reused as "fast music".
Nonetheless, I'm happy about the things we did produce. In particular, the grass, which I think is visually effective and probably the highlight of this game's visual style. I may end up making a library to render this type of grass, so that others can use it in their games in the future.
Performance is a bit of an issue. I suspect that most computers will be able to run the shaders, but the game does require a decent CPU. This is due to lack of time for optimization. I hope we won't end up getting too many DNW's because of this.
I'm grateful to my teammate, who created all the models, music and soundtrack while also working on his own entry. I think the soundtrack is amazing and I love the UI sound effects in particular. I'm also grateful to the authors of the wecs and panda3d-simplepbr libraries. And of course, to all other PyWeek participants for another great challenge, and lordmauve for organising it.
I'm looking forward to the next PyWeek! I'm excited about trying out all the other entries, I see some really cool ones among them.