Brian

What is Brian?

Brian is a cross-platform jump-and-run platform game. It is a completely indepentent game but it was heavily inspired by Commander Keen.

What is Brians current status?

Brians current status is alpha. That means you may be able to get it running, and there are some graphics and sounds, but it is far from finished. Do not expect it to be much fun to play for now.

What is the goal of Brian?

Brian will have monsters, multiplayer, music, sound effects, a story line, a level editor, multiple episodes, level maps, pogo jumping, full scrolling, doors, keys, and many more features. This may take a long time, however.

Is what language is Brian written?

Brian is written in Python, using the Pygame library, which runs on top of SDL. It's written in Python because it's a beautiful language and the only language I know :P.

Why is it called Brian?

It's called Brian after Monty Python's Life of Brian.

Do you have a screenshot?

Click on the image for a full-screen image.

What if I want to help?

You're very welcome! Send me an email stating what you want to do. The Brian project uses Sourceforge: here is the project space (unfortunately, it's called pybrian there because brian was already used). Brian requires not only coding but also sound effects, background music, sprite graphics and (later) level creators and storyline authors.

Requirements

Most of these are included with Redhat 9.0. Only SDL_ttf, pygame and SMPEG aren't, but installing those shouldn't be too difficult. Sorry for the lots of dependencies! Windows users only need to install Python 2.3 and Pygame.

Where is the code?

The code is in CVS. Documentation can be found here.

Troubleshooting
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "./brian.py", line 32, in ?
    from bz2 import BZ2File as Archiver
ImportError: No module named bz2
      

You are missing the bz2 module. If you have compiled Python 2.3 yourself, you did not compile bz2. To compile bz2, you need the bz2 header files. Those are in the 'bzip2-devel' RPM package or can be installed from source. If you do not have compiled Python yourself, you probably have an outdated version of Python: make sure you have at least Python 2.3. You can check it with "python -V".

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "./brian.py", line 315, in ?
    main()
  File "./brian.py", line 280, in main
    game.mainloop()
  File "./brian.py", line 127, in mainloop
    DataServer.music.play()
  File "/home/gerrit/cvs/brian/DataServer.py", line 86, in play
    pygame.mixer.music.load(m)
pygame.error: /etc/timidity.cfg: No such file or directory
      

You are missing timidity.cfg. Make sure you have timidity installed: "rpm -q timidity++". Timidity is included with RedHat 9.0. If you do have Timidity installed, make sure /etc/timidity.cfg exists. If it doesn't, create it. Timidity.cfg is probably living in /usr/share/timidity/timidity.cfg. You can check it with "rpm -ql timidity++ | grep cfg". You can create it with "ln -s /usr/share/timidity/timidity.cfg /etc/" (as root).

Hopefully, other error messages are self-explanatory. If not, please contact me.

Brian uses Sourceforge, so here is the Sourceforge.net Logo

[SourceForge.net Logo]