History of Python Wars Solo

Python Wars Solo is the result of a few hours effort roughly duplicating a text-based Star Trek game I wrote back in 1980-1981. You fought up to 9 Klingons in your Enterprise. Beating one was a piece of cake. Three was a fun challenge. Five was tough. Seven was done only a few times. Nine was never done. The game was simple, fast, easy to learn, and tons of fun.

Now I don’t remember much about the mechanics of the code I wrote back in High School. So when I started writing Python Wars Solo I decided not to worry about it. I would code how I felt like coding, and just create a game.

There were a few false starts. I kept trying to add tons of complexity to the code, or lots of neat features. Lots of time was wasted and not much was done. The technical term for what I was doing is ‘Scope Creep’. Then someone advised that I just make it really simple and get it done.

And I did. I got it done.

To avoid potential yet likely silly copyright/trademark issues, I renamed the ship the ‘Pythonista‘. The enemies are the evil ‘Zargons‘.

Future Version Thoughts

Originally I thought of expanding this out to become a game with graphics and maybe a campaign. Then I went onto other things and got too preoccupied. But here was my original list of things to add:

• Keep basic mechanics
• Add 2-D map
• Incorporate PyGame
• Since all components are objects on ship objects which exist in the space object, current version could easily be expanded:
• Let players build their own ships and use introspection to generate menus
• Damage the ship in ways so that parts get broken