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Ludum Dare 28 - You Only Have One

Saturday, December 14th, 2013

Hello friends! I’m going to be writing a few posts here about my Ludum Dare entry and process. For the unfamiliar, Ludum Dare is a 48-hour game making competition around a particular theme, in this case “You Only Have One” I haven’t had the time to make an entry in ages, not since my last failed attempt. My goal this time is to have a completish game, something that doesn’t raise an exception to exit the game =).

After some stumblin’ and bumblin’ I decided to have a game around a lone dragon protecting a little village of hapless tribespeople. As you protect the village, they grow and do more stuff, but also become more dependent on you to keep them safe and content.

Now that I am writing this down, this is sounding like some Randian screed on the virtue of self-reliance. It’s not. It’s just that dragons are cool, and Twitter agrees.

Here’s a screenshot of what I have so far. Next thing is to get the dragon in motion and breathing fire, then we’re talkin!

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Ludum Dare 28 - Day One Wrapup

Saturday, December 14th, 2013

13 hours of work come and gone, minus a game of Tobago and some insane CS humans-vs-bot action.

The latest state of the game is playable. You can burn down the evil ork, or you can choose to turn on the innocent villagers and burn down the hut.

So far so good. Tomorrow is all going to be about the two I’s - AI and UI. The eventual game idea is to have ork lairs that spawn and gather orks for raids on the village. You have to go out and hunt these lairs to keep the village safe. Over time, more and more lairs spawn, and if enough are active at once, a great WAAAAUGH will form and they’ll all rush the village. Not good.

I will be a happy man if an ork can throw a spear into the dragon by day’s end tomorrow.

I’m thinking about a new title though. Perhaps “Our Hero, Dragon” ? What do you think?