You are browsing as a guest. Sign up (or log in) to start making projects!

The Ares Horizon

By @Al

  • 13 Devlogs
  • 31 Total hours

My own python adventure game where the player starts is a Flight Director at NASA. There objective is to successfully launch, navigate and land there spacecraft on the surface of Mars

Source
Ship #2

@Al on The Ares Horizon

What did you make?
I made The Ares Horizon, a Python space adventure game where you play as a NASA Flight Director. Since my last ship, I over-hauled the game by adding a brand-new landing minigame with 3 difficulties, branch-linked storylines, and dynamic custom themes.

What was challenging?
Ditching Tkinter for Pygame was tough because I had to learn the library from scratch to eliminate bugs. I also lost 5 hours failing to host it on the web via noVNC/Docker, forcing me to stick to an .exe. Fixing cross-platform crashes and making it run smoothly on Python 3.14 was a huge headache.

What are you proud of?
I’m proud of building a robust Pygame + Tkinter interface with zero prior experience. The settings menu features a slick volume slider that changes color dynamically, a factory reset, and a text-speed slider. I also successfully added a seamless “Try Again” tracker without long loading screens.

What should people know so they can test your project?

  • Windows: Go to the Releases page and download the The.Ares.Horizon.exe file to play instantly.
  • Mac/Linux: Follow the new README steps to install system dependencies (sdl2) and run inside a Python virtual environment.
  • Python 3.14: Run pip install pygame --ce to avoid compilation errors.
  • Warning: Turn down the audio in the custom Settings menu if the default launch mix is too loud.
  • 8 devlogs
  • 19h
  • 11.40x multiplier
  • 217 Stardust
Try project → See source code →
Open comments for this post

@Al on The Ares Horizon

2h 44m 52s logged

Devlog 13 !!

What’s New:

  • I added Reset All Settings to default button, to reset every thing to the “Factory Setting”
  • New setting, users can adjust how fast the typewriter writes on the screen
  • If the user passes the mini game and lands successfully, they would unlock the option to just play the minigame instead of have to go through the the whole story again

Notes:

  • I promised that I will release web, I tried, failed miserably, so I am just releasing a new .exe
  • I tried everything to pygame, didn’t work out, then tried to host it on noVNC, it acted up to, I finally gave up after 5 hrs of trying, didn’t count that because that was trial and error and not actual coding (although I did had to make and modify my Dockerfile like a 100 times)
0
0
8
Open comments for this post

@Al on The Ares Horizon

2h 13m 45s logged

Devlog #12 !!

What I did:

  • So as u guys know I added audio controls in the previous devlog, I made it even better now
  • The settings menu is now in pygame instead of tkinter
  • The slider changes color as the volume is changed (It looks so cool!!!!! )
  • There is a new “Mute All Sounds” check box

Notes:

  • tkinter sucks, I loved it at first it was easy but as my code becomes more complex it just causes unnecessary bugs, so I plan to switch entirely to pygame
  • After I make the switch I can finally publish it to the web so you guys don’t have to download the source code or an .exe file (I was planning to do this, I got many reviews saying that a website would be better, so I am doing that)
0
0
7
Open comments for this post

@Al on The Ares Horizon

1h 33m 55s logged

Devlog #11 !!!

What I did:

  • So I switched from ctypes to the pygame audio engine this is so when my game is played on MacOS or Linux it doesn’t throw errors because ctypes is a Windows thing
  • Added a settings menu to control the volume of the background music and the emergency sounds. The user preferences are saved using a .json file
  • Updated my README.md so the instructions to how to play my game on another operating system aren’t broken
  • Thanks to my ship suggestion, I am trying my best to implement those suggestions into my game and have already done so with a few of them!!

What might be coming next:

  • I hope that I can add to the settings menu so the user can control how they want the colors to look in the game, so basically full customization.
0
0
9
Open comments for this post

@Al on The Ares Horizon

2h 3m 2s logged

My first ship is finally here, after 3 changes requested, I added a try again screen so the user doesn’t have to through the loading when they try again now it just shows there tries. Thanks for the idea from my first ship.

0
0
5
Open comments for this post

@Al on The Ares Horizon

6h 31m 22s logged

v2.0.0 I think??

What’s New:

  • New Landing minigame!!
  • 3 difficulties
  • The minigame features SPIKES!!
  • Improved GUI

Changes:

  • I orginally started building my game on tkinter thinking it would be easy because my rest of the code was build on it, but I was wrong, it was so annoying to work with and caused so many bugs that I decided to switch to pygame I have never worked with pygame before so I ha to learn and then figure out a way to combine tkinter and pygame.
  • Also, pygame is not supported in Python 3.14 so I had to do pip install pygame --ce the community edition
  • I got it to work and I am so proud
  • The video is a bit speed up
1
0
28
Open comments for this post

@Al on The Ares Horizon

1h 5m 6s logged

I cleaned up the UI and linked the Solar Sails choice in branch 2 to the ending choice of branch 1.

I know I promised that the update after the SFX one would be customization but I want to focus more on the game itself so I would just be adding a Dark and Light mode. And doing more customization options later.

0
0
29
Open comments for this post

@Al on The Ares Horizon

2h 24m 51s logged

v 1.0.1 is incoming!!

What’s New:

  • Switched from the package of playsound to ctypes
  • New SFXs, listen to them in the attachment

(After this update rolls out, I will be working on given the user the freedom to customize how they want the game to look)

Turn up your sound to listen to the sounds

I cut out the parts where I selected options so that I don’t reveal the answers, if you want to try it out your self head over The Ares Horizon Repo

0
0
25
Ship #1

@Al on The Ares Horizon

I made my own choice python adventure game where the player takes a high-stake role of a Flight Director at NASA and there objective is to successfully launch, navigate and land a spacecraft on the surface of Mars. To play the game follow the steps in the README. (The game uses Desktop-Based GUI, so it cannot be hosted on clouds and has to run on your local computer). I am proud of how I made it look cinematic and similar to a NASA mission control terminal.

  • 5 devlogs
  • 12h
  • 9.08x multiplier
  • 105 Stardust
Try project → See source code →
Open comments for this post

@Al on The Ares Horizon

1h 31m 23s logged

Currently working on my README for this project and before this I just fix a few things in my code. Added a background music loop that loops the audio forever and then fixed a crash bug

0
0
6
Open comments for this post

@Al on The Ares Horizon

4h 22m 29s logged

Added GUI to my games, fixed countless errors and bugs, added a loaded screen, Made it so that the buttons are interactive and only popup when the typing is finished. Added more colors to my text. Progress bar for the points.

0
0
10
Open comments for this post

@Al on The Ares Horizon

3h 25m 16s logged

Finished all the choice, added typewriter function and color function. Changed how I want the text to be displayed when the code is running. Added background music. Made the background audio in Canva

1
0
16

Delete project?

Are you sure you want to permanently delete this project? This action cannot be undone.

All devlogs, followers, and associated data will be removed.

Followers

Loading…