2D Platform games with PyGame

I've been writing computer games for quite a long time but rarely finish anything and never publish them. Just to show that I can actually finish things, here's Object Collector 2D, a tiny game very similar to Manic Miner and a hundred other old platform games. It took one day to program and comes in at 388 lines of Python while still, hopefully, being fairly readable in case any newcomers to Python or PyGame want to use it as an example. Don't expect a competitor to Braid.

I have a tendency to spend a lot of time working on the mechanics of games, finely tuning collision resolution and other rules. There's a great talk on YouTube by Martin Jonasson & Petri Purho called "Juice it or lose it" which shows how much more you need than good mechanics to make an enjoyable game, and it's these things I need to work on.

The code is in my github repository "2dgames", under the directory "collector": https://github.com/jmacarthur/2dgames/tree/master/collector. You'll need PyGame to run it.

Exhibiting the Mk2 Turing machine

Here's a short video clip of the Mk2 Turing machine working at Derby Maker Faire. It took about 6 weeks from sending the plans off to RazorLab to having a working machine at the Handmade Digital exhibition in Manchester. There are still lots of handmade parts in the Turing machine, but having the majority of it laser-cut has made it much easier to construct.

There are also a lot of bugs in the design. One of the great things about the laser-cut design is that I can record these bugs as though they were software defects, which they are in many ways. The design for the machine is on github, at https://github.com/jmacarthur/millihertz/tree/master/scad/newbuild, although it may not be very intelligible at the moment. I really need to spend more time documenting the design.

Lots of people have said they like the shiny black laser-cut Turing machine, and others have said they prefer the scrappy style of the original. Personally I'd prefer to hand-make the final version out of solid brass, but that will be several iterations away.