Long time no post. Ludum Dare 22 and beyond update.
It's been awhile so might as well put SOMETHING up here.
So since my last post I tried to do Ludum Dare 22 and well. It didn't go as expected. A co-worker and I were all geared up to go come Ludum Dare weekend. We heard the theme Friday. Talked on the phone for a bit about the incredibly difficult theme of "Alone", and decided to cogitate on it for the night. We set out to meet up Saturday and get to work.
I arrived first and set about making some basics in Flashpunk. An idea floated around in my head, bumping back and forth like a horribly fit backpack. Alone as a theme is pretty dark, or well it always ended up in dark places for me anyways. I like my alone time, don't get me wrong, but whenever it is a theme for some sort of piece of work all I can think of are the non peaceful types of Alone(AKA abandonment, confinement, and so on). For some reason the image of a lonely person trudging through a blizzard kept being brought up in my head. Maybe it's too much Empire Strikes Back in my life, and Hoth had a bigger affect on me than I thought, but I kept ruminating on that Idea.
My teammate Luke rolled in not too long after and we got him set up with Flash Develop and Flashpunk. Unfortunately hadn't really messed with either enough to be particularly familiar with either. That was ok though as we basically agreed to try again as a team later. He sat down and started doing Flashpunk tutorials and generally hung out the rest of the day. It was great fun and we are closer friends now because of it too.
Now that I was on my own I quickly went ahead with my idea and made the above guy. Yes I was inspired by/totally aped the style of Superbrothers. Then I went and made some snow textures and tossed a few particle generators on a repeating level texture.
Bam! Endless walking done!
I should have stopped there and just made a menu and have it just fade after a few minutes of walking or something. Nope, not me. I had to go for more. Being who I am I had to develop a story, a reason for this guy to be trudging through the snow. Alone.
The story would be delivered through a text box at the top of the screen, since I didn't want to do voice over, and the narrative would unfold as letters between the guy walking and his family. The story is that the guy walking had to leave home to travel to the capitol to talk to the king to get some help with a rise in bandit attacks in the mountains he calls home(the ones he is wandering through). The letters are of him and his wife corresponding. With each subsequent letter they miss each other more and more. The wanderer gets delayed going back by an invasion of another country. The final letter has the wanderer speaking happily of coming home and how much he can't wait to be home.
At this point the wanderer would have been walking on a path to a house, where the wanderer would enter and quietly sit down at the table after putting up his pack. Alone. The screen would then pan and show a couple of graves in the backyard under a Tree.
The whole idea, while I thought it was good, was incredibly depressing. Without Luke there I think I would have wrapped up the day just totally bummed out.
I never got the text working. Which I suppose is a good thing because I never got the dialog to go in it either. I didn't finish the game. My designs were too grand for just one weekend. I never submitted it to LD either. I may return to this and make a one shot of this. I think I could pump it out in Unity3d pretty quick now.
Now I am looking forward to the @petermolydeux game jam and have signed up for the non bay area participants.
