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Grav Cavern - Tange - Competition Entry

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This is a 2D game where you play a character who must reach the exit of each square grid level to continue. It is top down but gravity may may be in any direction or completely off. Also you cant move, instead you must throw stones at special bricks to activate their directed gravity field which will push you around.

It is made with Panda3D and will therefore run from source on almost all platforms if Panda3D is installed. The game when compiled into an installer was 57mb for Windows which is too large to host on my website for everyone so you will just have to enjoy running this from source. This also means that you are able the create new levels because the level file format is just a python file which calls simple methods on the level object.

There are only 3 levels because time was tight, but at least 2 out of the 3 will challenge you I hope.

---About Panda3D---
For those of you who avoid downloading extra engines just to run games I ask you: Have you not looked at this engine for use in your own games? It's so feature complete I must assume that you have simply never heard of it. EVERYONE I know who has looked into its capabilities has decided that there is no better engine to develop with. I hope you all enjoyed using what you did but more so I hope you will heed this advice that this is an engine worth using. This is my first 2D game using Panda3D, my others were an FPS and a Little Big Planet clone using Panda3D's builtin ODE Physics.

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Comments (archive)

Kimau says ...

Not many people want to download a propriety engine.

noonat says ...

Yeah... that's the downside of Panda3D. Simple games are friggin enormous downloads for it. I'd recommend using something smaller like Pyglet for future games.

CodeJustin says ...

Seems nice but too much work to run the game, sorry mate.

jplur says ...

Hmm.. I'm confused. I actually had panda 3d 1.5.2 installed but still cant run the .py file.

Sorry man

ExciteMike says ...

I'm sorry, man. With 143 other games to look at, asking people to take the time to install Panda is maybe a bit much.

jazmeister says ...

You need to link the extra fluff required to download your game in future, sir. The game itself was pretty interesting, but not very fun. Try getting someone else to play it during development, and resist the temptation to talk them through the puzzles.

dock says ...

I'm really sorry, it's a big pain to download and install Panda3D just to play this. There are places where you can upload 60mb files, that would have been okay for a lot of people.

badlydrawnrod says ...

Agree with the rest of the comments - asking us to install Panda is a bit much. Sorry.

Gilvado says ...

Weighing in with everyone else -- what we use to develop in is our own business. Forcing everyone to run from source isn't a good plan when you could find a site that would support 60 meg uploads, which for the record I'd be ok with d/ling.

Wiering says ...

In response to "Have you not looked at this engine for use in your own games?", I wouldn't choose to use a system that will probably scare off lots of potential players (by requiring a huge download). The Internet is flooded with games, lots of good ones, if one causes any trouble, people will easily go on to the next. Getting your game to be noticed and played is a challenge, so there should be minimal effort involved. I recently switched from downloadable Windows games to Flash for that reason (and you can easily get 1000 times more people to play a flash game than to download&install a Windows game).

Jonny D says ...

:( Since when do pandas let you down?

ondrew says ...

Can you put all the runtime libraries into your file?

Endurion says ...

Ok, I downloaded and installed(!) the great engine. Rant on the end of the comments.

Looks like a nice puzzler but I'm really confused on the first stage already. A bit more of explanation as to why the player suddenly also falls in directions when there is no arrow would be nifty (top right edge of first stage). Maybe some tutorial stages for starters ;)

Also, if you require a huge SDK to download and install at least put a link there somewhere.
From the forums there I gathered that you could copy the runtime folder over and have a kind of standalone version.
This is quite a bit to tackle during 48 hours, but in the longer run (ie. more Panda games) you should try that.

Begin of rant (mostly aimed at Panda, not your fault):
A) The bumbling idiots behind Panda3d skillfully evade having a smaller runtime. You need to download the full frikkin SDK? End of test for any serious development as that's not feasible for end users.

B)
The install defaults to a root directory on C:? The days of DOS are long gone. That's not where you install to. Also completely unacceptable for any end user (who should run as admin).

C) If python is included as a runtime scripting language make it as such. Python IMHO is not a system dll and there should be no need to installing. Maybe they should try Lua.

D) Your game is not runnable from the source, you fail to mention that you need to call the python executable with a switch and path to your main.py:
C:Panda3D-1.6.2pythonpython.exe -E main.py

End of rant :)

Thanks to your entry I now know to avoid Panda :P

Jach says ...

I happened to have Panda3D installed so I played it. Kind of interested concept, could use some more polish. I got puzzled on the third level, and there's nothing after. (ERROR LOADING LEVEL FILE: /home/kevin/panda/gravcaverngame/gravcavernlevels/level5.py)

Will definitely use the source to study how panda games are generally made though, so thanks. ;)

The others are probably right though that you should just bundle the frikkin huge runtime if you want anyone to play it.