This was my first ludum dare ever so I didn’t really know what to expect of it. Also it’s my second little-time-internet-game-compo ever, the first one the last pyweek. I think it was my 3rd or 4th game I’ver ever made, but I’ve programmed other stuff before so it’s not all new to me. All that considered I do have some things I wished I could have done better..

Bad things (in no particular order):

• The choice of using Glut to draw fonts, because I was lazy. This led to my game being impossible to package and I think I missed out on some ratings because of it. ( I updated it with new font-rendering and working packages after the compo was over though). This choice was made purely because I was lazy, i didn’t know any other way to draw text in opengl so I ran with it.
• Taking too many breaks.. Yup, I took breaks. Plenty of them, I even played some games! Now, this is not bad, you need breaks every now and then to function properly. But taking to many will throw you off just as well, and of course leave you with less time to work.
• Not spending time on art. This was a big mistake, I started out with boxes for everything and that’s pretty much the way it ended up in the final game.I should have taken the time to make some ugly sprites, even that is better than boxes.
• Not leaving enough time to make some decent levels, I think the game could be great fun IF it had some fun levels. And I should have made a better ’system’ for loading levels and controlling the enemies.
• Using single-point particles as an explosion effect. Doing this in python, the quite possibly bad way I did it, turned out to be slooooow. Who would have guessed? Had I gone with something else maybe it would have run a bit faster. Also drawing lots of points in opengl immediate is slow in itself, should have bother being more fancy with it.
• Thinking “I can’t do that, I have no idea how to do it and I’m not a good enough programmer” too much. Turns out I sat around thinking about stuff I thought was really hard to do, that were in fact simple to do once I started. Not because of me coming up with a great way to do it, but just because the problem was simpler than I had imagined and/or I was not as daft as I thought.

Some good things:

• The idea! I liked the idea and had great visions for it, but the way I implemented it was no good and the game ended up being pretty dull. I might revisit it later and make something out of it. Done right I think you could make people spend some time on it.
• I finished! I’m very pleased I actually made a somewhat working game in 48 hours, I’m really pleased with that.
• Explosions, I think it looks really cool when you chain together a long line or a big bunch of bombs. And that’s what matters most…right? right?

That’s pretty much it. I really loved doing this, it was great fun and you are all nice people. I will be back next time, hopefully coming up with something better.

Oh, deskphoto! It’s a bit late, but better late than never. (Beware of dust)

I’ve changed the font-rendering in my game as to avoid GLUT and letting me build a working package you guys can run.

Nothing even remotely related to gameplay has been changed, only font rendering is different.

Here it is: PewPew Laz0r

And here’s an uptaded source version

I’m calling this done. I’m not happy with it at all but at least it’s playable.

My code and Python just wasn’t fast enough for what I wanted to do, I really think I could have made it a bit more fun had I gone with C++ instead.. More bombs.. more enemies.. But then again, being the slow coder that I am, I might not have finished if I did it in C++ ;>

Here’s the final file: Pew Pew Lazor
Here’s a version built with py2exe: Pew Pew Lazor py2exe
Here’s a version built with pyinstaller (not actually an installer though):
Pew Pew Lazor pyInstaller

And a screenshot to go with it:

Finished with my very simple system for advancing levels, spawning waves and stuff.. So you can actually play it now, although it still looks crappy and there aren’t many levels and you can’t be killed yet, just lose by failing to kill enough of the horrible block enemies.

From the looks of the other entries I’m definetly in the lower end as far as fancy graphics go, but I hope I can make some fun enemies and levels to counter it. Over all the game needs som tuning at the moment, especially the bombs…

Also, for those brave enough to try there’s a test-version here: http://www.kekbur.se/pewpew.zip

It’s written in pygame with pyopengl for drawing. It will try to import and enable psycho to speed things up, hopefully it won’t crash if psycho is missing

You play with the arrow-keys, spacebar and left control. Move with arrows, shoot bombs with space, detonate them with left control.

Yes you can!

Time to get cracking on the enemies… and then maybe some sound? I heard that kind of stuff is great to have.

Things are moving forward and it’s feeling great. My game idea is far from innovative but it’s fun to code it anyway, and that’s what counts for me.

So far you can spew out tons of bombs and set them off with a pewpewlaz0r, and the chain-reaction part is the bombs chaining together of course.. The plan is that you will use this to combat hordes of enemies (the blue boxes (they can’t do anything yet (Hey! is this what lisp is like?)))

Anyway, here’s a quick screeny.. Green bombs are waiting to be hit by the laser or other bombs.. the red ones are about to detonate.

Here’s a first screenshot from my game. Writing it in python and spent a few hours on it so far. I hope I have time to put some better graphics in it (sprites at least ;)) but we’ll see how much time I got left after finishing the gameplay parts.

Enjoy..