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Ludum Dare 22

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Gamejam
This blog post is more than two years old. It is preserved here in the hope that it is useful to someone, but please be aware that links may be broken and that opinions expressed here may not reflect my current views. If this is a technical article, it may no longer reflect current best practice.

Whilst not participating in the actual event, I have been learning about Python and PyGame this weekend. Initially, me and two others were going to work as a group, but later it became apparent that our sleep patterns were not syncing up at all which made this all but impossible. As a result, a playable, actually quite fun, game has risen from my “messing about to get some ideas”.

Titled “Kitten’s Missions”, the player takes the role of a cat that must go on missions and then return to it’s friends. There are currently two missions; the first begins where the kitten is lost, but on it’s way to a party. On the way, the kitten must collect enough beer for itself and the three kitten friends.

The second mission is slightly more dangerous. As the kittens are now drunk, they must have kebabs, and the player must venture through a desert collecting them. Unfortunately there are cacti in the desert and, as we all know, when a kitten comes into contact with a cactus, it will explode.

You can find the code on GitHub.

Update

All the code I wrote has now been refactored. I appear to be getting the hang of the Python way of doing things. The levels are no longer hard coded, and obstacles can be placed in the maps which cause the player to explode on impact.

A third level has now been added, based in space, where you must find water for your hungover kitten friends. Other than the scoring system, everything engine-wise seems to be complete.

Update 2

This has been published a little later than I’d planned, as I sort of went home and died in bed. My final game was a side-scroller written in Python using PyGame where you play the role of a kitten. This kitten completes solo missions, thus fitting the theme of “Alone”, in dangerous environments collecting beer, kebabs and cups of water. If the kitten comes into contact with a cactus in the desert or a satellite in space, it will blow up. Points are collected by collecting items, but are taken away for every item that remains, and for every item that cannot be allocated to one of the four kittens at the end of the game. You wouldn’t want 5 beers for 4 kittens, as that’s just going to cause kitten arguments. At the end of each level, the kitten is reunited with its 3 kitten friends.

After all the refactoring, the code now produces a framework for similar games. To create levels, it’s simply a matter of creating some images and defining where some things are within the image. Later, I might put together a simple guide for this.

You can see [my submission on the Ludum Dare website](http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid= 8784).

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