Continuing the trend of implementing those special playtimes for Skool Daze mode, I am pleased to report that the playtimes where the little boys gang together and then roam the skool looking for big kids and teachers to knock down - Playtime-Stampede-{1,2} in skool_daze.ini - are production-ready in Pyskool. Now, these playtimes are not “special” in the same sense as the peas, grass and mumps ones, which are used to replace “normal” playtimes on random occasions. The stampede playtimes are officially in the main timetable.

What was the point of them, though? It’s not really clear, and I doubt that Dave Reidy is available for comment - if he even remembers the answer. Perhaps it was a way to make little boys nos. 1-9 and 11 grab our attention in a game in which they were otherwise not really actively involved. (Little boy no. 10 was otherwise involved in that his duty was to inform Eric of what was afoot in the peas, grass and mumps escapades.) Or perhaps it was meant to represent a protest by those same little boys against not being otherwise actively involved. Maybe even both. We just don’t know.

Anyway, onward. Right now I’m tackling the trickiest part of Pyskool so far: the coordination between teacher, Einstein and Eric during lessons. Teachers will now hunt down Eric if he’s absent from class, but there are other details - such as giving Eric lines for being late, or for showing up initially, leaving while class is in progress, then returning again before Einstein has finished telling the teacher that he’s gone - that remain to be sorted out.