I finally thought of a “plot” or analogy for my game to help clarify the rules and make it easier to know what to do your first time playing.  So, here it is:

Imagine you’re the owner of an exclusive new art gallery: “Framed!” with the latest technology: A wall that can automatically revolve Artwork from the show floor to the back storage room.  You currently have an art gallery on display in specially brown painted frames.  A painter is scheduled to come soon to paint all the frames in the gallery White.

Currently, you’re in the back room preparing the next showing, looking at the back of your gallery wall.  You have placed all the new artwork in shiny White frames and hung them in the special revolving slots of your wall, but you still need to replace the old “Rogue” artwork still hanging in the gallery.

You know your showcase will be a disaster if any of the “Rogue” artwork is stilling hanging in the gallery, or if you’re missing one of your new pieces of art.  You have to first replace all the “Rogue” frames’ artwork from the gallery in the back and then ensure that every frame is facing the gallery for the showcase.

The only problem you find with your new technology; however, is that you need to rotate two frames around at once.  If they’re the same size, they’ll both stay on the gallery side of the wall displaying their new artwork prominently.  If they’re of different sizes, a “Rogue” frame that was once in the gallery will flip to you in the back.  And if they were both once “Rogue” frames in the gallery, any frame that is currently in the gallery is flipped back to you.

Your goal of course, is to have flipped all the frames on your back side of the wall so they are on display in your gallery (behind the wall) and ensuring that all the current gallery pieces in the “Rogue” brown frames have been replaced.  Of course, if you fail to replace the artwork in a “Rogue” frame, or if you get stuck with one frame in the back with you (unable to flip it to the gallery) then your showcase will be a disaster.

And that’s Framed!  Of course, why doesn’t he just doesn’t go around the wall to replace the “Rogue” frames?  Maybe he forgot the key to his gallery that day, but had the store-room key, maybe it’s just another case of insisting on using the expensive new technology you just bought, maybe he was just bored…  You pick.  Enjoy!

I figured I’d post some more after thoughts. The contest went really well for me despite not having the whole weekend available to me. I had to go home to visit my father who was recently in a skiing accident. So, I’m happy with how things went.

Unfortunately, I posted my final entry early, and then I found a bug that evening when playing my game before going to bed after the contest ended. It was a minor thing, but apparently I would play my game exactly the same way each time, and thus why I didn’t find it until later.

Then after sleeping, I realized that while my directions on my menu state one thing, I had eased up on one game play element, making the game some what trivial. So, when I woke up Monday morning, I set out and fixed it. Looking at the comments so far, it’s too bad I didn’t think of fixing it sooner.

All in all, I think I spent about 12 hours or so on the project. I used Python + PyGame for the coding, the whole thing is under 400 lines of code. I used SFXR and Musagi for the sound effects and music. And I used my good old pals MsPaint and Photoshop for the graphics. I’m always amazed when I find myself going back to MsPaint for the really simple stuff I can’t do in Photoshop easily. I also used Audacity to convert my wav samples to off format for file size. And I used py2exe with the pygame2exe script to create the windows executable.

I wish I was able to comment to the feedback from voting.  If your confused about losing, you have to make all of the “invisible” frames (outlined in black on easy mode) appear first before clearing the screen of frames.  It was kind of a hard thing to explain.  That’s why I added the outlines on easy mode from feedback I got back from my girlfriend.  Of course, after you’ve played a couple of times, it makes more sense.  As for after figuring that out, there’s a strategy that guarantees victory, which I realized and fixed shortly after the competition.

So, I think that’s everything. For those looking for more of a challenge and how the game should have played, feel free to check out Framed! v1.2 (win).

So, I actually updated my game a bit this morning, as I realized I should keep a mechanic going to make the game more challenging (also, indirectly fixes the problem I had before too), but I’ll wait to post a link until after the voting is done as its outside the 48 hours. Though I had plenty of time to spare during the competition, I think I must have only spent about 12 hours total on the project. The update also makes the Rogue Frame outlines thicker to help distinguish them. I mean, all in all it was about 10 lines of change, but it can wait.

* I really just wanted to note: While I don’t have a compiled Mac version yet, if you use the MacOS pygame packages from here, then you shouldn’t (hopefully) have any trouble running the source package with Python 2.5.

Here’s just the small update fixing a winning condition conditional. Hopefully, I may be able to post a Mac version too, but that relies on a friend of mine who actually owns a Mac. Not sure if they’ll be able to do it before they leave for a trip tomorrow. We’ll see, I’ll post it here if I can later.

Framed v1.11: (windows) (src)

Well, I was just playing my game before going to bed again, and I found a strange bug. The problem is it works fine when running from the source. It’s only in the compiled version. Must be an optimization happening or something, but Python uses byte-code so it should be the same. I’m very confused about it at the moment. It’s not a major bug, it just plays the losing sound and flashes the lose graphic for a second before flashing win and doesn’t do the nice animation.

I’m going to try and fix it now, and repost the exe after flipping around my logical conditions a bit.

Update: Of course, as always, as soon as you make a post, you find the bug.  And it just kicks you in the face.  It’s a really obscure bug, which if I had a legion of testers could have been found.  I apparently, would always end the game selecting two frames of the same size, and the bug occurs when it’s frames of different sizes.  What a pain.  Hope people won’t mind if I upload the fixed version to the small problem…  Just one small additional to a conditional…

Well, after waking up and just drinking some juice, I fixed my music song and tweaked the difficulty levels a bit. So, Framed! is complete!

It’s pretty exciting. I think I’ll make an installer later and post it permanently on my website. For now here are the links for downloading:

Framed! v1.1 Final: (windows) (src)

The windows version was tested on XP on two separate machines, let me know if there’s any trouble.  The source requires Python 2.4 or Python 2.5 and PyGame 1.7.1.  Enjoy!

You can see a recap of my progress log, after the break.

(more…)

Well, I’m not quite happy with my music loop yet, but it’s close. I’m using Musagi to generate my music. It’s a very useful little tool, though it has a bit of a learning curve. Need to dig out my three button mouse for it though tomorrow.

I’ve also used his Sfxr program as mentioned in a prior post for my sound effects. Along with a base of Python + PyGame for my programming. It’s 361 lines of codes and few external files for the images, sounds, and music track. I’m pretty sure I’m all done now, but I’m going to get some sleep, work out my music a bit more tomorrow, and I’ll post my final version then.

In the meantime feel free to listen to my first complete attempt at Musagi here (ogg).  And the screen shot of my updated menu with updated instructions:

Well, I’ve basically completed my game, though I want to add some “minimal” background music as it is a thinking/puzzle game.  It’s turned out to be a little more interesting than I first thought, which is, of course, good.

However, after initial feedback from my Dad and girlfriend, I’ve had to try and make it a little clearer about what you’re supposed to accomplish.  Which I think warrants an easy/hard mode toggle as the “clear” method makes the game a lot simpler.

Think that’s all for now.  Probably going to go to bed soon and work on the music a bit tomorrow, maybe.  Of course, ate the staple of pizza for dinner, but it was also for other reasons beyond my control…

Well, I’ve got a menu now (well, minus one graphical glitch), and all that’s really left is the winning condition check and seeing if I want to add music… Not sure if I want to add anything else, that game’s pretty simple. Somewhat of a take on the “same game”, but with frames!

Well, after my algorithmic failures last night, had got some rest, and had to drive down to my folks, but I’ve put a couple of more hours in today. Right now, I’ve fixed my generating algorithm to be perfect, and was able to get some nice padding for the frames in:

I’ve also added some basic animation, figured out a game mechanic, and a name “Framed!”. Now, I just need to justify it with a plot? Naw… Though, I should make a basic menu and add some sound effects, as well as let you know when you win the game.

I’m excited, hope everyone else’s projects are going as well. Any objections to my color schemes?

Well, I’ve made some progress (see picture). I have my main screen up and running and am able to select the “frames”, but I’m having trouble figuring out what I want to do with them still. Figured that idea would come up as I went, but not yet. It’s getting late where I am, so I’ll sleep on it and hope more inspiration falls on me. Otherwise, my graphical inspiration may fail to become a nice game concept, which wouldn’t really be a surprise…

Considering, I didn’t think of a minimalist idea beforehand, I figured I’d ask our friend Google for help.  Doing a quick search provided me with some nice inspiration:

Just take one of the walls though…  Anyway, starting to mess around a bit with some coding, but it’s getting a little late for me.  So, we’ll see how it goes from here.

Well, some of my other ideas, I don’t think would mesh well with minimalist, but at least its a theme that might allow me to actually make something. I’ve worked on a minimalist type game before, but I’ll need to do something different this time around.

Anyway, figured I’d post a picture of my Laptop:

I’ll be working here for the next couple of hours, and then I’m going to sleep. Of course, in the morning, I’m heading back home to visit my Dad. Not sure how much work I’ll get done there. Just have to see if I can at least put the start of something together in the next couple of hours.

Well, I’ve heard a lot about the contest, figured I should give it a go.  Only problem is I don’t have the time I’d really want to spend on it.  Lots of complications as of late…

I’ll have to wait and see what the category is, and see if I can come up with an interesting idea, but I think this’ll be more of a dry run for me and not something as serious as it should be.

I’ve put quite a few games together in the time span of a day though, so I’m not too worried, just don’t think I’ll have that extra time to spend to spruce anything up.  Of course when using Python, development always seems to go a little faster.  I have my own game engine I’ve been working on, but its no where ready to share, so I’ll forgo it for the competition and just stick to the basics.

Anyway, only time will tell.  Good luck and all the best to everyone.