Today i started my game Terraformancer, standing for terra forming by magic :)

It's a 2d strategy game where you help little people to reach goals by raising
and lowering segments of the land they walk on

You have no direct control over the people but can only set tasks that the
people will try to fullfil. You support them by changing the landscape to
protect them from danger like water and deadly animals or to help them reaching
specific places.

So the terrain is kind of wibbly-wobbly :)

So far i have a terrain that can be lowered or raised. All work in progress but a good start.

Hi folks,

today i spend not that much time, but i fixed some problems and now there is water on the terrain :)
It floats into holes and the effect is really nice when you alter the terrain and the water floats around..

Tomorrow i will work on the tiny people, so tomorrow i hopefully can present a level that isn't so unpopulated like this one.

Here's a (static) screenshot.

It's not exactly what i planned to submit but it's playable and it has wibbly-wobbly terrain :)

In the game you lead a drunk guy to the princess and escort her back into the safe tower. You have
a spell to cast upon this guy, to remind him what to do and you can also raise and
lower the land to create a safe path for him and the princess. But beware,
besides a nasty time limit there are also earthquakes that shake the land!

Select a spell with the mouse and:
- click the guy with the escort spell to tell him to go and get the princess and return her to the tower
- click a terrain column with the raise or lower spell to alter the terrain

Your guy and the princess cannot pass large terrain gaps and deep water.

Now i reaaly need to get to bed, but i couldn't resist to take a quick look at the other entries and i saw some really interesting things there.

Sleep well and relax, it's over :)

mmkay made me aware that some of you might have problems playing Terraformancer.

If you get an error, stating that pygame.Rect.copy() is not supported, then just update pygame to version 1.9.

Thanks to mmkay for that!

For me, one of the most interesting parts is looking at the comments and suggestions. Having an interesting and unusual  theme and to design a interesting game, which will be played with usefull feedback is my main motivation for participating the PyWeek.

I'm grateful for every line of feedback you gave me, so thanks for your thoughts and suggestions. At first i wanted to make 2 diary entries, one feedback entry and one postmortem entry, but after i started with the feedback i realised that 2 posts would contain many redundant informantion so i merged the posts.

Feedback:


Comment
Nothing happens when I run the game. Linux 32 bit. I had to kill the process to get it to stop.

Answer
Sorry for that, i only tried my game on my windows machine. I think about setting up a virtual linux oc to test my entries in the future before realesing them. At least i can test if the game is working.



Comment
Traceback (most recent call last): File "./run_game.py", line 4, in main.main() File "/home/godfryd/PyWeek-10-finals/pw10_trobadour/Terraformancer/gamelib/main.py", line 729, in main level = Level( level1 ) File "/home/godfryd/PyWeek-10-finals/pw10_trobadour/Terraformancer/gamelib/main.py", line 561, in __init__ self.init_level( self.data ) File "/home/godfryd/PyWeek-10-finals/pw10_trobadour/Terraformancer/gamelib/main.py", line 564, in init_level self.spellbar = SpellBar( pygame.Rect(SPELLBAR_TOPLEFT,SPELLBAR_SCROLL_SIZE) ) File "/home/godfryd/PyWeek-10-finals/pw10_trobadour/Terraformancer/gamelib/main.py", line 100, in __init__ self.texture_rect = rect.copy() AttributeError: 'pygame.Rect' object has no attribute 'copy'

Answer
Using an up2date pygame library will fix this. For future PyWeeks i try to add all required libraries to the entry.



Comments
nice concept.

I like the concept.

good but time is too short.

It's a little short but sweet.

Nice little game.

Great idea!

Intresting idea, liked the ground moving thingy, uncomfortable controls, nice graphics

Answer
Thank you for that. I always try to make something different (not always successfull). The game is so short because on saturday it was more than a techdemo than a game and i had to throw many features of my original gameplay away to release something playable.



Comment
Graphics are a bit tiny. Princess didn't seem to know what to do when the guy reached her the first couple of times I played. (Maybe she just doesn't like the idea of following a drunk guy?)

Answer
It's mostly programmers art (That should explain everything:) ). Everytime during a PyWeek i try to make a plan that includes all needed graphics. My wife willingly draws some sketches for me, which i scan and colorize to have content for the game. But if there is no plan she hardly can create any sketches... Maybe i succeed better next time (Don't bet on that).



Comment
This whole game is very ... retro (but at least it is consistent about it). The music is makes it work for me.

Answer
Thank you for that. The music was very important for me. I searched long for something that creates an earthly atmosphere and fits the wibbly-wobbly-terrain earthquake thing. Because i have no that much experience to create my own track and i was going solo, i was happy to find this perfect track.



Comment
It was difficult to grasp exactly how to shift the land properly. However, very innovative concept.

Answer
As i sad i tried to make a game out of a techdemo. Also i wish to had more time for a proper introduction or tutorial to explain the "game" mechanics. Hopefully i can accomplish that during the next PyWeek.



Comments
After coping with some issues connected with the pygame version, I've finally managed to play the game. Understanding what the game is about happened to last for a minute or two, but the idea behind the game was quite cool. There were some problems in clicking everything quick enough to win the game. Perhaps using the keyboard to choose the spell would be more pleasant. However, it was quite nice to play.

The challenge level was certainly good. It took me three tries to get it. The controls were a little frustrating, having to keep clicking back and forth to cast different spells. I would like to be able to select spells with the keyboard.

frustrating in a non-funny way

Looked more fun than it actually was. Had to disable the sounds to get it to work, but this could be a problem with my pygame installation.

Answer
Selecting a spell with the keyboard is a great idea. I will add this to the Pyggy version. Like many others of you said, it's hard to determine the difficulty level of your own game for other players. The original time limit was 60 seconds (i believe it's now 90 seconds) which i already found to easy. But after letting my wife play 1-2 rounds i decided that this limit was far to harsh for players that were new to the game. If you are lucky with the earthquakes, then they don't change to much and you need less time than usual. So there is also this luck component, which is hard to balance to make the game challenging but not frustrating. Obviously it didn't work for everybody, so i have to check this in the future.



Comment
A simple concept lovingly implemented. It is a bit clumsy to play (I do not think the "To Princess" scroll adds anything other than frustration) and the production is as simple as it gets, but it has personality.

Answer
I have to admit, that my AI is not just rudimentary but also buggy. Originally the guy you command wasn't drunk, but i had bugs in the controling methods (also for the princess) which i couldn't fix before submision, so rather then fixing the bugs, i just called him drunk. It's not a bug, it's a feature :D



Comment
Cool entry. It's always nice to see entries that try something new. You should take this one to Pyggy.

Answer
I will. The game differs in great parts from my original design, where you as a player control multiple guys, each having task like gathering resources, avoiding wild animals and finally return the princess back to the tower. With the gathered resources the player can cast several spells to adjust the terrain, defeat enemies and so one. Also there were different terrain types with different behaviours. So this and the thing that i cannot look at my code without shame (nearly pure spaghetti code), i have several motivations to polish my game during Pyggy.



Postmortem (without the details i told in the feedback section):

To make a long story short, due to work i had less time than i needed, and my entry results heavily from that. But from that emerged an interesting minigame which was fun to code and (less) fun to play. I will participate in the Piggy to show you, what i originally had in mind.



Resume:

Thanks to all of you and especially Richard for a great PyWeek, i enjoyed every 'bit'  of it ;)

Feel free to comment or add suggestions, you're welcome!

PS: I can proudly say, that there are at least 17 people out there who played my game. Not everybody can say that :)