Please Bring Back the Yellow Sheep!

student2.PNG in code
student3.PNG in code
sheep 2.png in code
wmStudent.PNG in code
swem.jpg in code
yellowSheep.PNG in code
sunken.jpg in code
studentsLose.jpg in code

This is inspired by the harrowing story of the missing adorable swem yellow sheep! I wanted to make something that reflected the current state of life at William & Mary, so I thought making a fun game involving the missing sheep would be a good way to incorporate a current event around campus. I've also always wanted to try to make a game in python and Pygame and never got around to it, so I thought my first hack-a-thon might be a good time to do so. This project acts as a virtual way for users to have closure about the yellow sheep returning to Swem. In it, users complete a quiz based around William & Mary facts in an attempt to outwit the captors. If they succeed, the sheep are shown in Swem library. if they fail, the captors catch up and the student kidnaps the sheep. I built this game using python and Pygame in vscode. I used the Pygame to make the environment for the game and learned how to use the windows to my advantage. There was definitely a learning curve, especially in regards to the text positioning, as I have never used Pygame before. I also got the pictures from the web and edited them so the ones for the sheep and the students would have transparent backgrounds. I also resized them. I used python lists to make the quiz. I ran into a few major problems while accomplishing this project. First, I was originally going to make a more involved game instead of a quiz but realized after a lot of trial and error that this would be futile with the amount of time I had available. I then decided to pivot to a quiz. I was also originally working on Colab, which I am much more familiar with than vscode, but I realized its vast limitations when using Pygame, so I had to switch to vscode, which I have never really used before. All in all, these limitations and challenges, as well as countless other smaller ones I faced along the way of completing this hack, greatly cut down on the time I had to complete my game, but also taught me how to think on the fly and work under a time crunch. I am very proud that I completed this game in the time given, as well as that I learned vscode and Pygame within the time frame. I am satisfied with my game and I will definitely be trying to make more games in the future. Especially for my first hack-a-thon, I am proud of what I accomplished. I learned to think critically about the time and resources given before starting something that will be futile. I also learned that sometimes getting something submitted is superior to making sure everything is perfect; I learned this one as I was stretching into the late hours of last night trying to fix every little flaw I noticed. There are so many different ways I could take "Please Bring Back the Yellow Sheep!" next! I could turn it into a series of games, possibly each dealing with a different section of campus and in different formats instead of all quizzes. I could also keep the quiz format and add different difficulty levels or stages around campus. Within the students, I could change the speed at which each creeps up on the sheep or add more student photo options. if I add new stages around campus, I could add different losing photos for those stages. I could also simply add more questions. Another idea that would be easy is to edit out unnecessary code because my limited availability meant i wasn’t able to this at all pretty much. Along these lines, I could also add more comments or fix up the editing on the photos. There are so many ways I can take this project and I'm so excited to try them!