Nuclear Bovines

There is a game I have on Amiga called “Atoms”. It is a simple little game, based around a board, where each player takes turns to add atoms to the squares on the board until they explode and claim other squares for that player. I tried to make this game in Python before I came to University, to at least have attempted some coding before I started any computer science course modules, and whilst I managed to make the game itself pretty much work in about a day (quite good for zero Python knowledge and a PDF of DiveIntoPython) I spent weeks fruitlessly trying to get a GUI around it before giving up.

Now that I can code in an object oriented way in Java I thought I’d try again. Starting with the GUI builder AbeilleForms I made a quick starting place for the interface, then after about an hour I had come up with what I have dubbed Gnucleon 0.1 (because the name Gnucleus is already taken by a Gnutella client, and Googling for Gnucleon doesn’t bring up any software, so I took it).

I have put it in git if you want to have a play with it. Unless you change the “players” variable in the source file and add some more switch cases for changing the square colour then it is 2 player only. Also the grid size can’t be changed without editing the source. Yes, it sucks but it didn’t take long to make. I’ll work on it in the future.