PyWeek - PyBlockTower
AwardsRatings (show detail)
Overall: 3.7 |
| Files: | Uploader | Date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| PyBlockTower v0.95b.zip | 5.94 Mbytes | Tigga | 2007/05/02 00:13 |
| First post comp release. | |||
| PyBlockTower v0.91.zip — final | 2.74 Mbytes | Tigga | 2007/04/07 22:34 |
| Final submission. | |||
| PyBlockTower v0.7c.zip | 199.57 Kbytes | Tigga | 2007/04/07 00:27 |
| Should work with ubuntu | |||
| PyBlockTower v0.3.zip | 189.85 Kbytes | Tigga | 2007/04/06 00:45 |
| A game! | |||
| PyBlockTower v0.2b.zip | 180.53 Kbytes | Tigga | 2007/04/05 00:12 |
| A toy. Game tomorrow hopefully... | |||
| SS2.jpg | 29.44 Kbytes | Tigga | 2007/04/05 00:04 |
| A tower is blown over by the wind | |||
| PyBlockTower v0.1c.zip | 151.42 Kbytes | Tigga | 2007/04/04 01:07 |
| Third go at a demo. | |||
| Buckle1.jpg | 105.25 Kbytes | Tigga | 2007/04/01 22:19 |
| Engine test #1 | |||
Sunday 22 April, 2007
[ Tigga @ 15:12 ] PyBlockTower: A reply to comments
Firstly, a thanks goes out to Richard,
the guys on IRC, and all the people who made, and tested the games.
There are some great games out there, some of which I may keep tabs
on and play again some time in the future.
Comments are annoymous, so I thought
I'd reply to them here:
sometimes it behaves kind of buggy
but this is one of those games you can spend hours playing and
replaying
I plan to work a bit on the physics
engine. I'm hoping I can get the thing to be slightly more stable,
though when I tried that before performance dropped.
Good idea, but pyODE can be a
SERIOUS pain to install.
Sorry about that. You've got it now
though!
Solid dynamics, and the game is
really intuitive to play. I found it almost impossible besides the
easy level though. Some more polished graphics and interface and this
could easily be a shareware title.
Thanks. It got easier for me when I
learned to take it slow, and use every block to it's best. Also the
wind judgements get easier with time. I included lots of difficulty
levels to allow the player to slowly step up the difficulty. I'm
currently somewhere in between medium and hard.
Fun game! Really nice use of the
physics engine. Fits the theme quite well too. Production-wise quite
nice, though could use a little bit of polish here and there and of
course sound wouldn't be out of place. Something like high-scores
would be nice. Also the game starts up in full-screen mode and then
makes it impossible (?) to press the exit button. That only seems to
work when I switch to windowed mode. With a little bit more work this
could be a game to come back to a lot, where the player continues to
try to improve their previous record (amount of blocks used, time
used, etc on a particular difficulty level). What would be really
nice if you could build the tower higher than a single screen as
well. It really does need a high score screen in that case.
The game defaults to 800x600 full
screen. This may cause problems on computers that don't have 800x600
supported as a full screen mode. I'll probably upload an updated
version in the coming days that switches to windowed mode if the
display can't handle 800x600 full screen. Sounds were in the
pipeline, but I ran out of time, same with high scores.
Wow, really cool game! Please
develop it further!
I plan on doing a
bit of further development.
The building controls is very
intuitive. I love it.
Took me a while to
get those right – glad somebody noticed!
wow this is coooool ... should make
the tower build up to infinity though the more it is the more points
you get. Also wind changes and different blocks would be a ++!
Wind changes were
in earlier versions, but didn't make the cut. Towers aren't stable at
the best of times, and having to deal with wind changes would make it
even tougher. Might add a difficulty option though. Infinite hight
could perhaps be done in a sandbox mode. I didn't want to have to
deal with scrolling screens, as they do bad things to frame rates if
you have plenty of other stuff going on.
The block's suicidal tendencies are
a bit frustrating.
I think this comment refers to blocks
fading out. This is a bit tricky. Firstly, blocks which touch the
wall, IMO, need to be destroyed - otherwise you could use the side
walls as part of your tower. Secondly, playtesting showed that blocks
being left at an angle were a real pain to build off, so blocks over
a certain angle (10 degrees IIRC), for a certain time (about 4
seconds) are destroyed as well.
Addictive and very difficult, I
could get my tower above the line, but it was never there for more
than 5 or 10 seconds before the wind? blew it down.
Try
building into the wind, and take your time. Also – you could
try lowering the difficulty; I think I made the default a bit too
hard.
Very cool!
Thanks!
Sound! we want sound of boxes
falling and crashing! What a great game.
Sound and music are
both in the pipeline if I develop this much futher.
This game is alot of fun, good job!
Thanks!
This was pretty challenging until I
figured out how to build for the wind. I thought it could have used
some sound and a better victory scenario.( maybe some hand comes out
and knocks over your tower ) having some non-interacting or
interacting objects like leaves blowing in the wind would have been
nice to see how hard it is blowing. I liked it :D
The clouds are the
basic indicator of wind strength at the moment, though something at
different levels might be an idea. Not sure about the big hand...
At first, I didn't have PyODE
installed, but wow! Excellent job detecting the lack of that, and so
very nice to not have a crash message for once. Well done!
Eventually, I got ODE compiled and installed, and then PyODE
installed, and was able to play your game. Very fun! It's a fun
concept of a game, a bit like Tetris, a bit like Jenga, and overall
nice and enjoyable. I would like it if I were able to rotate blocks
though. It could also be neat if you had to build up from piers in a
river, such that if blocks fell into the water, they were lost. This
could force the player to try and build towers and join them together
with horizontals and make more ornate structures. I dunno' though,
just an idea. The existing game that you made is quite a bit of fun
to play with, though I do wonder what you could do with it with more
polish. You've got some great potential here. Well done!
I don't like
getting tracebacks either, and a simple try:... except:... clause is
very easy to write! I considered allowing rotation of blocks, but (in
my experience) there are some orientations you would never use if
that was allowed. It seems to be horizontal blocks are almost always
more effective than vertical ones, for example. As for more ornate
structures – the physics engine would have to be tweaked to
allow good looking spans.
This game is pretty fun. It's a
simple, yet very effective idea.
Thanks!
This was one of the game ideas I was
considering using. I'm glad I didn't, because this was a better
implementation than mine would have been.
It's strange. This
was my original idea, but I dismissed it as I didn't fancy writing
all the collision detection and response, and thought it would be too
slow anyway. Then I found PyODE, which solved all my problems. Great
package.
Probably the most fun entry for me.
It didn't have a lot of flashy graphics but the gameplay is
absolutely flawless!
Thanks! The
gameplay still has it's flaws – the blocks don't always
interact very well, but I'm planning on trying to fix that.
Fun and innovative! :D
Thanks!
Very very cool. I'm impressed that
you got so much stability out of ODE. A free form sanbox mode would
be fun to play with.
There is a switch
in the globals python file which removes time and block limits, as
well as win criteria – the counters still count but nothing
happens. Used it mainly for testing, but had I the time I would have
implemented it in the options/difficulty menu.
Cool use of physics, but it was very
hard to deal with the wind.
I think the default
difficulty was a tiny bit too hard with the wind. Easy mode makes the
wind a lot more manageable.
This game rocked! It was very
simple, but I loved the physics and gameplay. It made me remember my
days of block building as a kid.
That was actually
my inspiration. Even when the towers fall down it's still quite
satisfying!
The wind is evil I tell you. Pretty
innovative concept.
Hehe.
Nice game. You should definitely
develop it further. Add some more types of blocks and stuff. It would
probably also be nice if the blocks could rest at an angle, although
I guess that presents the problem with players just making a big heap
of blocks without planning anything. You should try Wario Ware Smooth
Moves on the Wii if you can, it has a similar minigame in it.
There are several
problems with angled blocks; they are very hard to build on top of,
they're hard to do collision detection for, and they allow a big pile
of doom! I was told about that minigame near the end of the contest.
Might have a look.
i hate the little blocks. they
bother more than they help. its a bit to hard. placing hard,
everything shakes.
I agree, they are a
bit of a pain to fit in; but I think that's just part of the game.
interesting idea... gameplay needs
to be improved.
In what ways?
This is one of my favorites, top 3
or something of the most fun games! What I miss the most is a better
level system, and a bit mor polish overall.
I wanted to steer
clear of a 'level system' as it would kick up testing and balancing
time. There are several ways it could be implemented, but I can't
think of any really satisfactory way – maybe a “challenge
mode” with preset blocks.
Cool game. Mouse doesn't want to go
to the options/pause/exit sidebar very much - just warps back into
the game. Doesn't see much point to the resolution setting. Different
shaped blocks would be cool. And different colours. And perhaps that
idea where you get set different shapes and have to use them, rather
than random shapes.
Not quite sure
what's going on with the mouse. Sorry. Differently shaped blocks are
a good idea – they'd probably have to have sides parallel and
perpendicular to the game edges as the current blocks do, but it
would allow you to lock the structure in place a bit more. It would
have added to the work of the collision detection/respose which at
the moment is quite simple in PyODE.
quite fun game (though not
innovative) - made good. a little more production would help a lot
Another comment
suggested that there was a similar Wii game, however I have not seen
any other games like this before.
I like the game idea and the game
itself is fun, too. If you'd like to extend the game, you could add
different game modes, e.g. build a tower on a smaller area or tilting
ground (ok, that sounds hard to program and hard to play).. Anyway:
Well done.
Tilting ground
sounds evil! Smaller area... hmmm.
Awesome game, just needed more
levels/sounds/whatever.
Sounds, yes.
Levels? It's not really level based – more difficulty mode
based.
Physics. Yeah, physics!
Heh.
nice fun game..
Thanks
Would of been nice to have
non-rectangular blocks, and sometimes I had a hard time inserting a
block in between two other blocks.
Yes, this is a
flaw. Sometimes it's because a block has blown/pushed slightly out of
position, sometimes it's just a glitch. I tried quite hard to get the
jittery motion out of the game, and I'm still trying.
It's a very solid physics puzzle
game, but nothing really rises above average - the game looks OK, but
not great, the concept is nicely elaborated with the wind and all,
but not that interesting, and the gameplay is entertaining, but lacks
greater variety. I like how you've incorporated the physics engine,
and the game doesn't slow down at all even with lots of blocks on
screen. The controls are very good too - the interface is so fluid
and natural, that you almost don't notice it. So kudos for that, but
I still don't think I'll return to play this game much in the future.
And then, one small improvement that would be easy to make: Add a
one-click reset button.
As any interface
should be. At first I was a bit worried that people would feel that
the block positioning seemed to jump about a bit too much (in earlier
versions it did), but it seems to have gone well. Good idea with the
one-click reset.
This is great! I love it.
Thanks!
Reminds me of bridge building games.
Also that screenshot looks like a cannon.
It does a bit. I
wanted to get a shot of something falling, which is quite hard to do
in one image.
Nice game, good idea. It's pretty
hard to balance the tower for the requested time. And that *** wind
too... :D. Ownz!
Thanks.
Hurricane wind........This game
rules :)
Hehe
You're missing some sound and
background music there. Other than that, great entry. It's very fun
and innovative. Also, challenging without being cheap. =)
You're right about
sound.
Fun!
Glad you found it
so.
Quite fun. However it quickly
becomes very easy quickly. I do hope you keep working on this. Some
recommendations: use difficulty levels. Have higher levels have birds
smacking into the tower, more wind, deformed blocks, deformed ground.
Ability to save screenshots would be really cool. I made a couple
stable towers that looked really rickety :) 2player mode would be
really fun if you could throw 1x1 or 1x2 blocks at your opponents
tower, maybe once every time they get a block above the line.
Difficulty modes
are already in there. Mentioned in the readme, and are off the
options menu. I might bind Print screen to do a screen capture –
didn't really think of it. My thoughts for a multiplayer mode would
probably involve two completely separate games, but with the same
blocks spawning, and a split-screen. Would kick up the pressure quite
a bit!
Thanks again
everybody for commenting and voting. I hope to take this a bit
further, though I may not have time for a while (exams coming up
soonish).
See you all in
PyWeek5!
Friday 20 April, 2007
[ Tigga @ 18:04 ] Rating
30 hours, 8 games left.
How is everybody else doing rating? I've found despite the number of games I've had quite a bit of fun doing it. I keep having to stop myself coming back to a few of them.
Sunday 08 April, 2007
[ Tigga @ 01:12 ] It's over!
I'd love to hear any comments on my game by anybody, as I'll probably do a bit more work on it after the end of the week. Writing them as a comment to this entry would be lovely.
See you all next time!
Saturday 07 April, 2007
[ Tigga @ 18:46 ] First Final Submission
I've got a few more optimizations I wouldn't mind making, but this has everything I set out to put in. Only thing now is to make sure it works on non-windows platforms. I'm hoping somebody will help me with that.
[ Tigga @ 00:00 ] PyODE and Ubuntu
I just found out that the latest version of PyODE isn't packed with Ubuntu. In the older version you can't assign attributes to objects, and I was relying on that for a fairly important (gameplay-wise) chunk of my code.
Just a heads up for anybody using PyODE. Check the changelog here here for a full list of changes Ubuntu users probably won't have.
Friday 06 April, 2007
[ Tigga @ 01:21 ] Nearly there...
2 days left, and I finally have something playable!
It's still running a bit slow, and I'm running out of optimizations. Tomorrow I plan to change a large amount of my per-pixel alpha channels into colorkeys in the hope that'll speed things up. Also in the pipeline are difficulty/display options as well a few tweaks here and there to the gameplay. If I have time I might even add a few graphics (currently only using one cloud texture for example).
Thursday 05 April, 2007
[ Tigga @ 00:32 ] Back on track?
So, 1.5 days after scrapping my last idea, I'm (perhaps) back on track.
I've uploaded a toy. Build a tower (point and click). Have the tower fall over. There is wind to blow it over, as well as what you would expect - watch the clouds.
Tomorrow's (and probably Friday's) plan is to add some gamey type things. Most objectives will probably revolve around building a tower of a certain height, and having it stand above that height for a certain time, with a limit on the total amount of blocks available.
After that it's options and optimizations.
Tuesday 03 April, 2007
[ Tigga @ 15:39 ] New Game...
So, I've decided what I was trying to do is too slow to be practical (despite not having got my head round all the maths yet), so I'm going to scrap large portions of it and work on something similar, but with slightly different mechanics.
The first idea was to have the blocks breaking if there was too much load on them... but working out the max load in each block isn't trivial.
The new idea is slightly simpler, keeping the general theme of building a big tower from blocks the same.
4.5 days to program a game from scratch.
Great.
Monday 02 April, 2007
[ Tigga @ 20:59 ] Bogged down
I'm getting a bit bogged down...
The original plan was to have the tower you build acting as a rigid body fused together, and have it topple accordingly, however I decided this was a bit simplistic, and would make the game easy.
Next plan was to work out the loading in each of the blocks, given the weight of each individual block. However, this is quite hard to solve, as the structure could be statically indeterminate, meaning I'd have to produce a lot of simultaneous equations and solve them to find the final state of stress. I'm not sure if this will be possible to do in real time.
Been trying to get that to work all day, with no success. Will probably scrap that all and start again tomorrow. I think once that is done the rest should be just coding, making fancy art, and getting a few sounds together.
Sunday 01 April, 2007
[ Tigga @ 22:23 ] First Day
Got of to a fairly slow start. I'm probably going for something vaguely resembling upside-down tetris. Using randomly generated blocks you have to build a tower to meet certain objectives. Started on the engine. Trying to keep it simple. At the moment you can place the blocks anywhere and they will fall, and glue into place. Still adding stuff to the UI, then I'll go onto victory conditions, and "bad stuff" that can happen to the tower...