PyWeek 15: One Whale Trip
The dates of this challenge are are 00:00 UTC Sept. 9, 2012 to 00:00 UTC Sept. 16, 2102. (That is 02:00 local time.)
Links
PyWeek Team and Submission Unlisted members: don't forget to register (it's ok if you are late).
Video of Gameplay with OpenGL Renderer: New postprocessing shaders (April 2013)
Video of Gameplay with Original Renderer: Without OpenGL postprocessing effects
Theme
The theme for this challenge is "One Way Trip." So there.
Coordination
Face-to-face: we will kick this off on Sunday, 2012-09-09 around 5pm at the Metalab. The time is only tentative, so watch this page for last-minute updates. Another get-together will probably follow on Monday.
Email: we are going to hijack the PyUGAT discuss mailing list for the duration.
Chat: come to our IRC channel on freenode.
Idea
Something like Jump'n'Roll, Skyroads, the Bit.Trip games or even "Guitar Hero." Something that scrolls back to front, gameplay consists mainly of learning long sequences of moves, the rhythm of the soundtrack may influence the gameplay or may depend on it. (kirill, hop)
Design: Whales
Whales, ocean, submarines, petunias!, under water
Gameplay
After the first meeting we are trending towards the "underwater" theme due to it's novelty.
The gameplay consists of the world advancing onto the player front-to-back (as in Skyroads, Desert Bus). Occasional Goodies that the player has to collect and Baddies that the player has to avoid advance on the player as the level progresses. Due to perspective, as objects get closer they get bigger.
Top 10% of screen is above water - for deco. Bottom 30% - sea ground. The middle - the playable area. The 20% on either side are not accessible to the player.
Some possible entities (deco or game-affecting): starfish, divers, whales, sharks, dolphins, mermaids, seahorses, shells, bubbles, seaweed, ...
Story
Something about the love of a Whale and a Submarine? Maybe a robotic-whale-submarine-villain kidnapped the whale's girlfriend? 
Prerequisits
PyGame (before 2016)
Installing PyGame on OS X with SDL from homebrew takes some fiddling. Follow this guide: http://www.daskrachen.com/2011/03/installing-pygame-using-homebrew.html
SDL2/SDL2_mixer/OpenGL (2016)
The current default branch on our Mercurial repository doesn't depend on PyGame anymore. Instead, it has a self-contained "core" module that builds against SDL2, SDL2_mixer and OpenGL. On OS X, install the dependencies using:
brew install sdl2 sdl2_mixer
then build it using
make -C core
Features
Feature |
Priority |
Scenes |
High |
Text skipping in scenes |
High |
Darker further enemies |
Medium |
Pearl counter (score) |
High |
Life indicator |
High |
Level Design |
High !! |
Enemies should disappear earlier |
Low |
Random Level |
Low |
Enemies size problem when close |
Medium |
Making Of
Homebrew 3DS Port (2016)
The source is available from the Git repository (you need devkitARM, zlib and sf2dlib).
Standalone OS X Build (2016)
The source is available from the Git repository.
Pocket C.H.I.P Port (2018)
