Progress has been slow as time and other obligations being a big constraint amongst our team. Nevertheless, now with all hands on deck, the expected release date will still be on target. Hope ye be ready for a swashbuckling good time in the final release.

Sprites

 

Peggy the Pirate won’t be Peggy in the final release of the game. As open-source female pirate sprites are few and far between, Bob the Pirate will be taking center stage. Bob is taken from OpenGameArt.org.

Player Mechanics

Pygames works in the 2D X and Y planes, and coordinate (0,0) is located in the upper left-hand corner. The window size is set to a specific dimension and the player is confined within that boundary. Moving the player left and right only requires the X value to increase and decrease respectively.

Jump Mechanic

Combat Mechanics

The mechanics used for combat is still in development. Enemy and player hitboxes will be defined, and melee weapon is essentially treated as a short range bullet. Collision detection and resulting impact effect will be implemented into the animation. The destruction of a unit’s hitbox will result in an end animation.

Developing AI

 

Animations will be configured to their respective character.

Development is in progress for who the enemies will react to – the player and the treasure. The initial command for the enemies will be to reach the treasure. Along the way, if an enemy unit is in range of the player, they would follow the player and try to attack them instead. Streamlining this process will be essential for the game’s overall playability.

Challenges and Changes

LOTS AND LOTS OF TROUBLESHOOTING AND FIXING. The whole process is iterative. This means tweaking the mechanics, watching tutorials, and just the overall learning process. Even then the tutorial can only teach you so much. The major challenge is finding time to understand how PyGame can be used to implement the game.

Concept Diagram

Nothing major has been altered since the initial pitch. Players will still have to protect the treasure and defeat enemies in order to achieve a high score. Enemies are still able to damage a player’s health and instantly ends a game if they reach the treasure. The instant death mechanic can be altered to a timer based system where the player has a set amount to time to kill the enemy before the game results in a game over. Implementing this will change the gameplay dramatically as players will be able to do other actions before requiring to kill the enemy. At the current time, instant death will be used for simplicity.

Enemies will still increase in HP, acquire new abilities, and rise in numbers as the player moves from one level to the next. Players will still be able to gain unique abilities and/or power by getting more powerful oars. The stage will still be a stationary pirate ship setting where the treasure will be placed in the middle.

Timeline

That’s it for now, stay tuned for future development updates!