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[hcs]

around every corner is an experimental maze game. I developed it over the course of two weeks as an exercise in learning Python and pygame, and to test out an idea I'd had a while ago.
The mazes are very simple, the challenge is that you don't actually get the normal side-scrolling view: all that you are shown is a white region, the area where your character can currently "see". From this you can sort of tell where obstacles are (as they obstruct your view). The white region is also recently seen areas, but they decay from the edges, so the black gradually sneaks up behind you. This decay algorithm nicely preserves the stair-step patterns on line edges, which I think has a better visual effect than more precise edge detection.

You can face in any direction, which is a decision I'm still not totally comfortable with. If you were only able to look in one direction, you would be constrained to always run that way, which makes it more tense, but I'm pretty sure that it's too hard to play that way. I've also heard that it's hard to tell what direction you're facing.



from a few versions back. While I enjoy the way it looks in motion, I really didn't see much else to do with it, so I'm probably not going to take it past this rough stage. There is a Windows package and source code at the link above. System requirements are irritatingly steep; getting this to run fast in Python took some doing, but my 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 runs it twice as fast as it needs to. It uses no graphics acceleration.

I feel a little silly posting what amounts to an engine test among so many impressive games, but I'd like to get a few more opinions on it.

[ortoslon]

i love the game, i don't care if you call it "an engine test" (:

several bugs: the player can start running to the left, only to see a wide open corridor with nothing interesting happening. also sometimes after i die and autorestart, score resets to 0 and doesn't increase as i move, or i move as if one arrow key is stuck. i couldn't reliably reproduce these two.

EDIT: played it to the end. it's too short. more predrawn levels and/or endurance mode with sparse randomized levels would be nice.
re: facing: what if the player could only face east, northeast and southeast? such restriction urges him to move right but lets him look around a bit

[hcs]

Thanks for trying it out!

several bugs: the player can start running to the left, only to see a wide open corridor with nothing interesting happening.

A few people have pointed this out, I should just put a wall to the left of the start and be done with it.

also sometimes after i die and autorestart, score resets to 0 and doesn't increase as i move, or i move as if one arrow key is stuck. i couldn't reliably reproduce these two.

Restart should take you back to the beginning of the level, the first one starts at 0 and the second at 4000 (indicated by the green line). The input stuff is fairly messed up across reset, I wasn't able to come up with a satisfactory way of handling it and still just using the event loop.

EDIT: played it to the end. it's too short. more predrawn levels and/or endurance mode with sparse randomized levels would be nice.

I think that with a level editor it'd be easier for me to put together levels, but right now I just don't see much more to be done with it. I hadn't considered random levels, but that does sound like a cool idea.

re: facing: what if the player could only face east, northeast and southeast? such restriction urges him to move right but lets him look around a bit

With the viewing angle as wide as it is you do get a lot of exposure in whatever direction you're facing, but maybe some finer angles for diagonal movement would be nice. I'd thought it couldn't be done with my simple geometry system (only horizontal and vertical edges) but it should really just work the same way.

If I revisit it I'll keep your suggestions in mind, thanks again!

[Loren Schmidt]

This is neat. I definitely think you should take it further, it's such a compelling concept. It's also very attractive visually. I like watching the walls grow outward. They make some great shapes.

I'm not sure if it would help if we were forced to look right, because it seems to me that it would then turn into a game about blindly guessing which path to take, and then finding out if it was a dead end or not.

On the other hand, an unrestricted ability to turn is a bit awkward because it's possible to quickly spin in one spot like a lighthouse and be completely safe. I wonder if perhaps a limited turning speed would work...

Thanks for making this, it was great to happen upon it. I look forward to seeing future versions of this or other projects from you.

[hcs]

Thanks, Sparky. I enjoy the way it feels, too, but I find myself to be an incompetent level designer, so I don't see where else to take it.
The ability to turn quickly to remain safe indefinitely is actually the concept that inspired the whole thing: I was thinking about paranoia and looking behind you, so the game formed to require you to keep glancing around nervously. If it's possible to play that way, even when things have been loosened up a bit, then that's pretty interesting