{"author_name":"cowieaaron","cat":"LD #26","comments":[],"epoch":1367400180,"likes":1,"metadata":{"p_key":"42891","p_author":"cowieaaron","p_authorkey":"4380","p_urlkey":"78526","p_title":"Mini[mal] Wars","p_cat":"LD #26","p_event":"LD26","p_time":"1367400180","p_likes":"1","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"4380","us_name":"cowieaaron","us_username":"cowieaaron","event_start":"1366934400","event_key":"16","event_name":"LD26"},"text":"<p>I had some grand ideas for this game, but of course the 48 hour time limit forces one to be a pragmatist. It was going to be all the best bits of Age of Empires or Rise of Nations, mashed into a side-scrolling, minimalistic theme.<\/p>\n <p>The list of &#8220;essential&#8221; features missing is endless, but i&#8217;m still pretty happy with the result.<\/p>\n <p><a style=\"text-align: center\" href=\"http:\/\/aaroncowie.com\/LD26\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-253680\" alt=\"sun-11-42-pm\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/sun-11-42-pm-550x216.png\" width=\"550\" height=\"216\" srcset=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/sun-11-42-pm-300x118.png 300w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/sun-11-42-pm-550x216.png 550w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/sun-11-42-pm.png 1490w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n <p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n <p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-26\/?action=preview&amp;uid=4380\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-26\/?action=preview&amp;uid=4380<\/a><\/p>\n <p><a href=\"http:\/\/aaroncowie.com\/LD26\/\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/aaroncowie.com\/LD26\/<\/a><\/p>\n <p>The minimalism theme was to extend to the controls which should be all intuitive, gestural based with little to no HUD. Of course such a thing is hard to achieve while frantically debugging some of the most confusing bugs I&#8217;ve ever encountered (e.g. Flash\/Flex classloader issues and circular dependencies&#8230; yuck).<\/p>\n <p>The final game became a kind of ambient war simulation that you can just sit and stare at for ages.<\/p>\n <p>Despite being a programmer, my strategy was to begin with the art. This was very out of character for me, but I thought I&#8217;d give it a go and I think it paid off pretty well. The focus on art forced me to distill exactly what I wanted the game to &#8220;feel&#8221; like rather than to stick my head into the code and lose perspective of what i was trying to achieve. I strongly recommend it to anyone who&#8217;s reasonably confident in their game dev skills and wants to try out a bit more game design.<\/p>\n <p>Over the coming weeks I&#8217;m going to give this some polish and release it in some form (maybe android\/iphone) and then move towards an HTML5 rewrite and fully featured version.<\/p>\n <p>All in all a great experience. Will definitely being doing this again <img src=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-includes\/images\/smilies\/simple-smile.png\" alt=\":)\" class=\"wp-smiley\" style=\"height: 1em; max-height: 1em;\" \/><\/p>\n <p style=\"text-align: center\"><img class=\"aligncenter\" alt=\"litteguys\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/litteguys.png\" width=\"279\" height=\"163\" \/><\/p>","time":"May 1st, 2013 4:23 am","title":"Mini[mal] Wars"}