Alright, let me tell you about this little thing I put together, ended up calling it ‘evil snake’. It wasn’t some grand plan, you know, more like something I stumbled into. I was kinda stuck mentally, dealing with some real slow, annoying stuff on another project – the kind where you spend more time talking about doing the work than actually doing it. Needed a break, something completely different.
I remembered playing Snake on those old phones, thought, “Okay, I can probably whip that up pretty quick.” Just needed something simple to get my hands dirty and see results fast, unlike the day job back then.
Getting the Basics Down
So, I just fired up my editor, decided to use Python because, well, it’s straightforward. Pulled in Pygame for the graphics and input, nothing fancy. First step was just getting a block moving on the screen with the arrow keys. Got that working pretty fast. Then, made it drop a little food block, and made the snake grow when it ate it. You know, the standard snake game loop. Honestly, getting that basic part running probably only took an evening. Felt really good to just code something and see it work immediately, no red tape involved.
Making it ‘Evil’
But a regular snake game? Done that before, kinda boring now. I wanted to add a twist, make it a bit frustrating, hence the ‘evil’ part. So, what did I do?
- Dodgy Food: Not all food is good. Some red squares pop up, and if you eat one? Oops, your controls are reversed for a few seconds. Or maybe you lose a chunk of your tail. Keeps you guessing.
- Random Speed: Instead of getting faster smoothly, the speed just randomly jumps up or down sometimes. Really messes with your rhythm.
- Obstacles: Threw in some blocks that appear randomly on the screen. Hit one, game over. Simple, but deadly when you’re trying to navigate a long snake.
Getting these ‘evil’ features in was where the real fiddling started. Especially the control reversal – making it work without glitches, and making it last just long enough to be annoying but not impossible, took a bunch of trial and error.
Hitting the Snags
Oh yeah, ran into problems. Of course I did. Collision detection is always a bit tricky, especially checking if the snake hits itself when it gets long. Had this weird bug for a while where the reversed controls would get stuck if you ate another reverse-food pellet while already reversed. Nightmare. And balancing the ‘evil’ stuff was tough. At first, it was just ridiculously hard. The speed jumps were too extreme, the bad blocks appeared too often. It wasn’t fun-hard, just plain annoying-hard. Felt like I’d accidentally recreated the frustration of that other project I was avoiding!
Tweaking and Testing
So, I had to spend some time tuning it. Made the speed changes less drastic. Reduced how often the bad blocks appeared, maybe gave a tiny visual cue before one popped up near the snake’s head. Shortened the control reversal time. Basically, played it myself a lot, getting frustrated, and tweaking values. Then I got my nephew to try it, watched him play. Seeing where he got stuck and what made him yell helped me find a better balance. It needed to be tricky, yeah, but not feel totally unfair.
So, What Happened to It?
Well, ‘evil snake’ exists. It runs. It does what I set out to do – be a slightly mean version of the classic game. Did I release it or anything? Nah. It’s just sitting in a folder on my backup drive. But you know what? It did its job. It was a fun distraction, a way to actually build something and finish it, unlike the bureaucratic nightmare project I was procrastinating from. It’s funny, sometimes these pointless little side projects are the things that actually keep you going. Anyway, that’s the story of my little experiment with that pesky snake.
