Unfortunately, I have not worked that much on my game the past two weeks, so I don’t have a big update. But I thought I’d share some of what I’ve been thinking about that is tangentially related to the game. So here goes.
It feels inevitable that I’d find myself building a video game and somewhat coming full circle. When I was a kid probably 11 or 12, I got a book on how to build a video game in basic. Basic? You ask. That’s right. It was the early 80s and Microsoft DOS and Basic were pretty much the programming languages available to a kid.
I had an idea for a game inspired by the card game War and by Dungeons & Dragons. I already thought dragons were cool so this little guy on the cover of the book further inspired me to use dragons in my game. In Dungeons & Dragons, back in 1st edition I think it was, there were a lot of types of dragons.
There were 5 chromatic dragon types:
- Blue dragons that breathed lightning
- White dragons that breathed ice.
- Red dragons that breathed fire.
- Green dragons that breathed poisonous gas
- Black dragons that breathed acid
And 5 metallic dragon types:
- Gold dragons
- Silver dragons
- Bronze dragons
- Copper dragons
- Brass dragons
I think there was more than those I can’t remember them all. Then there was the goddess of all dragons Tiamat. This dragon had 5 heads each represented one of the chromatic dragons in appearance and powers.
My game idea would randomly select one of these dragons pitting them against others. Like in Rook there would be a card that could beat all dragons except its equal Bahumat. He was the God of dragons with 5 heads like Tiamat, except each of his represented the 5 metallic dragons.
I still think it was a rather clever idea for a 12 year old. But Basic was a bit above me in some areas and despite my dad working in computers he wasn’t able to help me learn what I was stuck on. I did manage to build some of the logic but got stuck on how to build the dataset to use to describe the dragons and pick from.
And here I am several decades later building my first video game.
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