It'll be some time before I have anything to show. So far I've just got a tray icon, and something that checks for the pygame version. (I thought about somehow getting the game to work in older pygame versions, but I use LayeredUpdate extensively, so I'd pretty much have to re-implement it. So I'm requiring pygame 1.8.0.) Mostly I've been brainstorming game mechanics.

My main plan is to have 15-20 levels (the PyWeek version has 5). No two levels should be exactly alike: each one should have some new or unique aspect, a unit or a hazard or something else. If each level lasts 3-4 minutes, that's an hour of gameplay, and hopefully it'll stay interesting for that long.

cyhawk suggested that rotation affect gameplay. This is a great idea, and some of the mechanics I thought of have to do with that. For instance, you'll have a couple seconds' warning of where lightning will strike, so you can avoid it to a certain extent by rotating out of the way.

I also want to incorporate placement as much as possible. It should matter not only how many structures you have, but where they are with respect to each other. I've got some ideas for how to make this happen, but nothing yet that will offer a rich strategy, where you have to make tradeoffs. Still working on it.

I realized I haven't played many video games lately. I'll have to find some strategy games to play that I can steal ideas from.

No gameplay yet; I'm starting from scratch on the user interface. This aspect has always seemed very ad hoc to me, but this time I've managed to modularize it to my satisfaction.

I only have three UI screens: the title screen, the gameplay screen, and the settings popup screen (currently just the screen resolution). Still, the interaction is fairly complex. For instance, when the screen resolution is changed, both the settings screen and the screen underneath need to be redrawn. Given that, I'm pretty satisfied with how it's turning out.

I'm uploading this framework so that I can test out the resolution settings on different computers. If you want to test it for bugs, get it here.

62 days left. So far it's been slow and steady. At the current rate, I estimate I'll be able to finish what I have in mind by then. But we'll see!

Stuff came up. I hope to keep working, but it won't happen by the deadline. Yeah yeah, you know how it is.

I have a bunch of notes on game design, so even though I don't have the game engine written, I feel like I've made progress the last few months. Maybe I'll work on it for warmup for the next Pyweek.

Anyway, good luck to the entrants who followed through! See you next time!