Pyskool 0.4 has been released. The download page has a copy waiting for you.

The main addition since 0.3 is the ability to save and load games. In my opinion, this is the best feature yet, since it makes playtesting much less time-consuming: save the game at a critical point, and then reload upon demand until happy with how things unfold. Being able to save games is also handy for regular playing too, of course. Maybe you need only one more shield in Skool Daze (or Back to Skool Daze), but it’s 9pm and therefore time for bed; instead of starting over when you get home from skool the next day, just save the game, and load it again whenever you’re ready.

Anyway, here are the things you need to know to enjoy the save/load feature:

• Press F2 to save a game

• Press F6 to load the most recently saved game

• To load a specific previously saved game from the command line, use the -l option, e.g.:

  $ skool_daze.py -l save/skool_daze/pyskool-0.4-20100528-123456.sav
  

• To load the most recently saved game in a given directory from the command line, use the -r option, e.g.:

  $ back_to_skool_daze.py -r save/back_to_skool_daze
  

By default, games are saved in a directory called save/game_name (where game_name is the name of the game), but you can change that by setting the SaveGameDir parameter in the GameConfig section in config.ini.

Other changes in 0.4 include:

• Skool Daze mode now uses the speech bubble graphic and jagged message box extracted from the original game (thus raising Pyskool’s faithfulness coefficient a little)
• The score box is drawn using labels defined in the MessageConfig section in messages.ini (thus enabling localisation of that text)

The plan for 0.5 is to add some kind of in-game menu, at the very least offering options to resume a paused game, save the current game, and load the most recently saved game (so you need only remember the ‘menu’ key instead of the keys for all those operations). But plans are subject to change, so I wouldn’t recommend betting your house, career, life or other valuable item on it happening.