There are some things I need to do before next weekend:

• Prepare a code skeleton/base (setup.py mainly, I want to support setuptools): DONE
• Read (again) some pygame stuff: DONE
• Think about the game type I want to implement and how can I make it fit into the different possible themes (I've never played Fallout, I hope that's OK and I don't misunderstand any of the themes!): DONE
• Read some literature related to the game type I want to implement (mechanics, programming techniques, etc): DONE

Update: Post Research

I'd like to give py2exe a go, because I don't know how accessible will be the source code in Windows (I'm a Linux user and the only Windows box that I have at hand is an old laptop with Vista - not in use).

I think I have enough documentation about pygame and game mechanics to have a good start. My main concern is that my (limited) experience is with C and SDL, and there are some cool features in pygame that need a mind shift before I start using them (such as the Sprites class).

Besides that, I think I'll be able to adapt my plan to the theme, because it's quite open (still... Mutation! is my favourite!).

Finally I'm going to look for some free clip art and graphics. I left that out of the list, and after reading 3 or 4 tutorials with nice graphics, I'm now convinced that it was a bad idea ;)

Today I attended Barcamp Apache Oxford 2011, so I couldn't start the PyWeek as I expected. Anyway, I managed to get some stuff done.

First. I've updated my entry, I have a title and a plot based in the theme (Mutation! yay!): Operation: Cell's Genome. Basically I'm going to implement the game idea I got past weekend having coffee with my partner (credit where is due!).

Second. I've been implementing an algorithm to generate the levels. Actually, it's just a generator for "a set of rooms joined by corridors", but it's definitely a good start.

References:

• Basic BSP Dungeon Generation: I've found this article very interesting, although my implementation it's not 100% compliant with the described algorithm. I'm not using a tree (oh, not strictly at least), but I'm happy with the results.
• Procedural Generation: wow! PyWeek references itself! Worth reading too.
  

Yes, it's just an ASCII output. No pygame code so far. This "meta" stuff was a good start, it feels good to see some progression. Btw, I'm not doing formal testing besides iterating 10000 times over the code and checking it doesn't crash. Close enough :)

I can tweak different parameters, such as size of the map, recursion level, etc; and the SEED for the generation. So it doesn't need to be random EVERY time. I'm thinking about it.

If you're interested, there's a lot information about procedural generation in rogue-like games (check the wiki in the previous link about BSP).

I'm going to work on some basic tiles fitting my game plot, and start with pygame stuff!

PS: the rich text entry editor for this journal is really frustrating. Can I haz markdown? :)

Ah, now I can remember why I NEVER finish a game project: I suck at graphics.

I already knew that, but anyway... I joined this competition and I'll do my best.



And yes... that's probably the best I can get (by now). I've tried to follow my plot. Can you see the cells? OK, kind of.

Some pygame code was written. Enough for a short first day!

I've improved the tiles, just a little bit, to fix some awkward cases I didn't like.



And then started with the scroll... :(

Worth reading: a newbie guide to pygame, or TL;DR: among lots of interesting stuff, I learnt today that there are some kinds of scroll you can't implement with pygame because of performance.

Nevermind. I think I've got a reasonable scroll with 30 FPS (sic). And that's all for today.

Tomorrow I'll try to add the main character and start playing with physics for the red blood cells (oh, please... don't take it too seriously!).

Update: read the comments!

I can't get any graphics that look like decent enough. I'm trying to adapt some CC-BY sprites, but still... I'm pretty demotivated right now.

I've been programming a menu, a help screen and the general screen flow (menu -> play -> menu -> quit; etc).



I'm using sprite fonts, generating them from TTF with something like this and then using some Gimp to prettify them (kind of).

I'm loading the keyboard configuration from a JSON file, so it's possible to change the controls.

But anyway, this is useless because there's no game at the moment. I'll keep working with the character sprites, and then I'll decide if I keep going on...

Update: uh, eh, something...



Some important bits missing, but... enough for the third day!

Yesterday I couldn't do anything and it looks like I'm going to lose Saturday too.

It's been nice. I'll try to reuse what I've done/learnt these 4 days for something good (hopefully!).