We had a bit of a slow start. Basically we didn't have all the members present at the same time and nobody had quite got the inspiration it takes. But look, then Idlework joined us and we've had some brainstorm-kind of thing going on and generally things have gone from not happening to happening.

The idea at the moment is to have a game about keeping your lawn clean and messing up your neighbour's. At least a single-player mode is supposed to be implemented, maybe multi-player too. As an awesome artist, I made this reference screen. The actual game may not look as awesome because I'll be busy making the music and updating the web-diarrhy.

As a wise man in IRC said, "if it has poop it can't be bad".

As you can see, two screencaps uploaded. One is the starting screen (btw who the hell is wildvoeglein?) and one is in-game. The pink boxes represent players and white boxes are objects that are thrown around. Night and day alter and the sun moves.

Next we're making grass and have animals chew it. And of course we have to have bird poop! The objects will most likely be well, animals and maybe bombs and other stuff a lawn needs. The plan is that the lawns will be have 10 units of grass with a colour that depends on its "health". Eg. getting chewed is bad for your health and in the end it dies. I haven't started with sounds and music yet, but I have a feeling I'll do something funky, now that I have a wahwah-pedal too.

So its been a long night. The team convinced me that dynamic grass is something they really wanted. I didn't think it would be easily done but it just sorta flowed out of me. By the end however I was fried. Pekuja's moon gave me some motivation to tackle making all entities throwable but I was too cooked. He figured it was straight forward and pulled it off. So for now we're looking pretty good, if we can get a ton animation work, entity logic, some sound and interface work done, we **just** might pull it off. No promises.

I wonder how I became a gfx artist for this project, but I spent a lot of time yesterday making animated characters for the game. In my earlier Pyweeks there's always been someone skilled to make graphics, which is cool, because without experience it has a kind of a trial-and-error component that takes time and the result isn't that great. After some frustration with OpenCanvas I switched to Paint.net, which is more suitable for pixel work.

Other than that, we are in a bit of a hurry. We've got some stuff going on but it's not much of a game. All our coders have been busy with non-Pyweek related stuff, so I'm kept on my toes. For example, Pekuja's grandma turns 90 today, so he'll be away. Happy birthday, if you'll ever read this.

To those who really expected to see something cute here, here's a picture of a seal.

A happy ending, huh? There was a lot of progress during the last two days and we put together something we could call a game. Finished in a hurry, but works anyway. I finished the background music like two hours before the deadline, which was pretty intensive and doesn't make me want to hear it again in a while. The team seemed satisfied though.

Actually the project got much more fun in the end, when there was a lot of real-time interaction inside the team. It motivates you a lot when you make something and other guys like it, instead of doing stuff just for yourself.

Ok, I can't think of much to say, other than that it was fun and I'm curious to see what others have made and what they think about our entry. Cheers.

Pickup:
Just go near the object you want to pick up and press the pickup key. If you pick up another thing, just let it fall by pressing again the pick up key again or throw it away and try again to pick up what you wanted to pick up.

Throwing:
After you picked up something you can either activate or throw what you are holding. To throw something further away you have to keep pressing the throw key so the force can build up. While doing so, you will see a little red dot emerging. This is the apex of the throw, just to help you aim a little better.