{"author_name":"stevejohnson","cat":"LD #19 - Discovery - 2010","comments":[],"epoch":1292803200,"likes":0,"metadata":{"p_key":"67782","p_author":"stevejohnson","p_authorkey":"3120","p_urlkey":"103585","p_title":"Lizard Wizard: Why It Is What It Is","p_cat":"LD #19 - Discovery - 2010","p_event":"LD19","p_time":"1292803200","p_likes":"0","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"3120","us_name":"stevejohnson","us_username":"stevejohnson","event_start":"1292544000","event_key":"5","event_name":"LD19"},"text":"

My LD19 game ended up being about a lizard who runs around in caves swallowing flies which represent pieces of Wikipedia articles. WHAT THE HECK<\/p>\n

My first blog post contains a vague concept of what I originally wanted this game to be about: seeking skill and knowledge in a cave system, as a lizard. You were going to be able to whip people with your tail. It was going to be awesome.<\/p>\n

But I started thinking about the theme more, and I couldn’t make my mechanics fit. So I mentioned the idea of finding pieces of Wikipedia articles on the Mumble (group voice chat) and a couple of people responded positively. I had already implemented the lizard movement and cave generator, so I rearranged my plotwise justifications and started figuring out how to scrape Wikipedia for random article titles and text.<\/p>\n

A word to the wise: scraping data from a user-edited site with its own special markup is pretty damn annoying. Lizard Wizard does an…okay job, but it took far too much time to do.<\/p>","time":"December 19th, 2010 7:00 pm","title":"Lizard Wizard: Why It Is What It Is"}