It’s Pyskool release time again. Pop over to the download page to grab version 0.2.1.

As explained in the previous post, the goal of the Pyskool 0.2.x series of releases is to implement all the game elements that are specific to Back to Skool mode. In the approach towards that goal, 0.2.1 contains the following new features:

• Eric can release mice
• The girls and Miss Take will jump up and down or stand on a chair if they spot a mouse nearby
• Eric can kiss (or try to kiss) Hayley
• Eric can open desks and collect the water pistol or stinkbombs
• Eric can drop stinkbombs
• Mr Wacker will open a nearby window if he smells a stinkbomb
• Eric can fire the water pistol
• Eric can fill the water pistol with sherry
• Eric can throw away the water pistol
• Cups can be filled with water or sherry
• Plants grow when watered
• Eric can stand on plant pots
• Eric is lifted by a growing plant
• Eric can step off a fully grown plant through an open window
• Eric can step off a fully grown plant over the skool gate
• Drops of water or sherry can be knocked out of a cup with a catapult pellet
• Teachers reveal bike combination digits when hit by a drop of water
• Eric can unchain the bike by writing the combination on a blackboard
• Eric can ride the bike
• Eric can stand on the saddle of the bike
• Eric can jump off the saddle of the bike
• Eric is launched over the closed skool gate if he hits it while standing on the saddle of the bike
• Teachers reveal storeroom combination letters when hit by a drop of sherry
• Eric can get the storeroom key (and hence the frog) by writing the combination on a blackboard
• Conker falls from the tree when hit by a catapult pellet
• Falling conker can knock people out
• Eric can place the frog in a cup
• Eric can get the safe key by knocking the frog from a cup onto Miss Take’s head
• Eric can open the safe by jumping up to it when he has the key

These new features are sufficient, I think, to make the game finishable (i.e. to enable Eric to open the safe in the head’s study without cheating). That said, the TODO list for Back to Skool mode still contains quite a few items. See the Pyskool documentation (included in the tarball/zip archive) for more details.

In addition, one serious long-standing bug has been fixed: the game should no longer crash when a character is chasing or looking for Eric while Eric is on a staircase or jumping.

OK, enough of that. Pyskool 0.2.1 needs playtesting! In order to encourage (and make it easier to get started with) playtesting, I shall now document the hitherto undocumented cheat keys that are most useful in Back to Skool mode:

• Tab - proceed to the next lesson
• 3 - prevent teachers from giving lines
• 4 - add a random number to the lines total
• 5 - reset the lines total to zero
• 6 - reveal the bike and storeroom combinations, and the locations of the water pistol and stinkbombs
• 7 - give Eric 8 mice, fill his inventory, and unchain the bike
• 8 - toggle between a water-filled and a sherry-filled pistol
• Page Up - open all the doors and windows
• Page Down - close all the doors and windows

To enable these cheat keys, you must start Pyskool with the --cheat (or -c) option:

$ ./bts.py --cheat

So playtest. Use the cheat keys. Report bugs. And have fun.