So I actually came up with a great idea: window cleaning the side of a tower from a swing stage. It had the potential to be lots of fun with linear game play, loads of obstacles, chances to peek in through the windows and spy on people inside the building for rewards and punishment, wind, rain, open windows, owls swooping in to steal your hat (since it has a rat logo on top ) etc. etc. etc.. Scoring would be based on the amount of time it took you to clean the side of the building and it would be presented as your paycheck. Of course there would be deductions based on complaints (from peeking into the building), damage, equipment losses etc. and bonuses based completion, good stories you tell your boss from peeking into windows etc.

Then about 5 or six hours after the compo starts the electrical storms start and I inevitably lose power.

I then consider my options, I decide to focus on some of the design decisions and gameplay options to refine my idea. I use pen and paper, do some math, create a plan and decide I will use the laptop until the power returns. However, since my only laptop was always plugged into ac, I hadn’t realized the battery lifetime had fizzled to about 30 seconds.

So I wait for the power to return, and wait, and wait, and I pretty much get to the point where I decide there is not enough time to proceed with my original goals. I needed a working engine in the first 24 hours and I couldn’t realize this goal. So this morning, I decided that I would not have enough to show for the competition and resign to completing some outstanding household chores. This time around it wasn’t meant to be.

I may choose to revive this idea at some point in the future, but I this isn’t realistic in the foreseeable future.

Tags: final post mortem

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 10th, 2008 at 4:02 pm and is filed under LD #12 - The Tower - 2008. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.