Fan Game. Name: Metroid Dread

[liamnajor]

I am making a fan game using python and pygame. I have a vid of what i've completed: the walking animation. I've been working on this for 4 days now. there are no screenshots or videos because of how early on it is. I will post regularly with updates on the project.

EDIT: I am renaming the project to Metroid: Insurrection. also, there is a video up on my youtube channal:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CWnzVpkzV8

[liamnajor]

I am currently working on jumping physics and the first room.

[thedopefish]

This sounds like a really impressive project.  I'm just curious why you waited until it was this far along to share it with us!

[liamnajor]

my internet was being wonky these past few days. Hereis a link to my current work (as of 9pm):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzERoQWaYkVjYUtUb0hlelB1cmM/view?usp=sharing

[Quietus]

I'd suggest you choose another name for your project. 'Dread' has become synonymous with something that doesn't exist, and (assuming your project gets that far) if you ever get near a release, any potential players looking for your project are going to be swamped with tonnes of sites all talking about the game that never happened.

[liamnajor]

how does 'Metroid Dread: Reprimed' sound?

[Quietus]

I think the key thing would be losing the 'Dread' part. There are any number of names you could use. Is there any particular aspect of your game that's got a heavy emphasis? New worlds? An art style? There must be something that could help you come up with a title. :^_^:

[liamnajor]

Well, are you okay with spoilers? Because
[spoiler] The main idea of the game will be that the metroid DNA in samus will cause HER to multiply when exposed to beta rays, like a metroid. [/spoiler]

[liamnajor]

maybe...... Metroid Insurrection?
Wait, that's the name of a FF mission.
It sounds good, but.........it's in FF.

[Quietus]

Sunder? Divergence? Fracture? Severance? :?:

[Hawntah]

I love this game. It's so much fun. You can go left and you can even go right too! But when I press x I get an error:
[spoiler=Oh noes]Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "./Metroid Dread Singleplayer.py", line 96, in <module>
    sprite = spriterightjump1
NameError: name 'spriterightjump1' is not defined[/spoiler]

Please fix?

[liamnajor]

I already fixed the x error. the jumping doesn't work fully yet, and I won't release the second version untill it does.

[liamnajor]

Well.....is is embarrassing........
I got into more coding tutorials and realized my game had SEVERLY broken code. Yes, I am restarting. good thing this happend not even a week in. if it had happened later, that.......would've been bad.

[sylandro]

Ok, so I checked out your sources and felt in need to say this. It's just a friendly suggestion on coding.

Break that spaghetti code into multiple classes. I know Python is not fully object oriented but that's no excuse. Refactor all your code into small functions, and by small I mean you should try hard for them to do only one thing (those ifs!). Eliminate all duplicate code. NEVER stop refactoring. Since you're building an engine from scratch, this is important. Otherwise, the technical debt is going to grow so huge you'll be entangled by your own code later on. Use unit tests whenever you can. I cannot recommend that enough.

Don't worry if you don't progress fast. Be disciplined. The value of keeping a stable structure is way more important than the quantity of features you can add on a set amount of time. That should be your priority. If you're serious about this project then you should be serious about the code as well... it doesn't matter if it takes years (I don't mean to discourage you!).

It doesn't matter if you don't take these suggestions seriously. Most of us don't, and realize this by learning from our mistakes. Just keep it in mind, especially if you plan to become a professional developer :yay:. If you do, there's a lot of contradicting information on software engineering out there. Use this as an opportunity to learn the principles of OO, design patterns, refactoring and unit testing.

I've been rambling long enough. Good luck!

[liamnajor]

Thank you, I will take that into account.(and as I've restarted, it'll be very easy to implement because I can code everything as such)