On Thu, 4 Aug 2005, Richard Jones wrote:

>  On Thu, 4 Aug 2005 11:02 am, Michal Wallace wrote:
> > How much up front planning and design
> > is allowed with PyWeek? I know we can't write
> > any actual code, but is it okay to have a
> > written plan for building a game around an
> > arbitrary theme?

>  That seems reasonable to me. People who have previously either
>  written a game or competed as a team (or both) will already have
>  this kind of plan. Some of them might even have transferred it out
>  of their head ;)

That's kind of what I was thinking.

>  It would actually be quite brilliant if you could share your generic
>  plan with everyone... preferrably before the comp. And if it was in
>  a wiki, others could contribute... ooh, this sounds like a cooler
>  and cooler idea actually...

Okay. I have no problem making this available for anyone.
In fact, if anyone likes it and wants to be on my team, or
if other teams want to use my plan, that would actually help 
me out a lot. To kind of give you an idea where I'm coming
from, here's the invitation I sent to my users:


-------------------------------------

Hi There!

have you ever wanted to:
    - help make a video game?
    - learn or use python?
    - show off your graphic skills?
    - work on an agile programming team?
    - experiment with literate programming?

If any of that sounds fun to you, then you're going to
want to know about Team Trailblazer!

What is Trailblazer? Trailblazer is a new, agile methodology 
aimed at distributed, part time teams, such as open source 
projects. I've been developing it for use here at cornerhost,
with great results, but so far I've only had myself on the team. 
The real question is whether it scales the way I think it will. 
So to test it, I wanted a project that was small, written from
scratch, and not mission critical.

That's when I heard about PyWeek.

The PyWeek challenge is a one-week, just for fun competition 
to make a video game with python. It's taking place over the
internet from Sunday, August 28 to Sunday, September 4, 2005.
At midnight on the 28th (00:00 UTC), a theme will be announced
for the game, and teams will have exactly one week to design, 
code, test, and ship their games. No game code or artwork be
created before hand, but we're free to use any pre-existing 
open source code or royalty free content.

We are also free to research, design, and plan how to implement
our game beforehand. This is good, because the trailblazer 
methodology is all about detailed planning followed by rapid
execution. [But note for the XPers: it's very different from 
"big design up front"]

So, if any of this sounds fun and interesting to you, and you'd 
like to be involved, let me know! ANYONE can contribute to this 
project (so feel free to forward this to a friend), even if you 
only have a small amount of time. Some things we'll need help 
with:

    - testing
    - graphics
    - writing
    - programming
    - level creation
    - documentation
    - mentoring
    - sound and music
    - public relations
    - research / problem solving

In addition, each area will need its own team lead to 
coordinate things, so if you've got mad leadership or
management skills, drop me a line.

For the curious, our final game engine will be open source 
under a very liberal (python-like) license, and the game 
itself released under a some form of creative commons.

For more information, visit:

the pyweek site:
   http://www.mechanicalcat.net/tech/PyWeek/1

the pygame site:
   http://www.pygame.org/

my latest explanation of trailblazer:
   http://sabren.com/index.php?p=83


And if you want to take part, please email me 
[michal j wallace] at michal@[...].com.

Thanks!

Sincerely,

Michal J Wallace
Sabren Enterprises, Inc.
-------------------------------------
contact: michal@[...].com
hosting: http://www.cornerhost.com/
my site: http://www.withoutane.com/
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