There is talk during each pyweek and ludumdare about a program that manages the playing and judging of the games. Apparently Unnheulu made a bash script last pyweek, but I’ve been wanting a GUI solution that works on any (or almost any) game, not just ones set up using the pyweek skellington, so I started the Compo Game Loader project.

The project is hosted at google code and you can see it here: http://code.google.com/p/compogameloader/

Here is a list of some interesting features:

• Load a directory and CGL creates a list of all the games inside
• CGL tracks which games you have already played so you can see what still needs to be judged
• CGL can track games in an unlimited number of folders in case there is an overlapping compo or similar situation
• Authors can add a lot of extra info by adding a simple CGL config file to their game folder. CGL can show author info and links, screenshots, dependencies, and a link to the judging page for that game
• Searches for a readme and displays it in CGL for your reference
• In python applications, CGL can test if the required dependencies are already installed
• Play games from inside CGL with console output shown at the bottom. No need to open consoles to get error info and trackbacks

Right now CGL is about 95% complete: Almost all the code is in, but it needs some testing and I’d like to get some user feedback. That’s where you come in.

First and foremost I need some sample games. I will download old pyweek games from the site if necessary, but I really would rather have games given to me by the authors. This allows me to

1. test lots of different game structures
2. get feedback on the config XML setup

I think the config file is extremely easy to use, but if nobody else thinks so the project will fail. Don’t be afraid though – you simple add your game info to the relevant tags in an already created file, as described here.

I also need some beta testers to find any bugs I missed and to test on linux and mac boxes.

If you want to help, leave me a comment here or find me on IRC in the ludumdare (irc.afternet.org #ludumdare) or pyweek (irc.freenode.net #pyweek) channels. LD #12 is just over 2 weeks away – with your help we can have CGL ready for it.