Digger Dwarves: August 2009

My favourite games have tended to be story-driven adventure games where a player's decision will influence the outcome of the game.

One of my personal goals for this project is to accompany the game with a light story; easily digested by our modern reader who doesn't have time for giant tomes.

I'd like to try to interweave parts of it into the gameplay, and encourage others to cut it up too if we decide to make an editor similar to Bioware's Aurora toolkit. You'll notice the creative commons copyright at the bottom which was inspired by reading works by Cory Doctorow. There is an interesting trend to give a piece of your art away for free.

I've started to write fiction again, which for me is awesome because it only took me 10 years to come full circle and realize that I want to write fantasy again. Over the years, I haven't stopped writing just not finishing anything; mainly sketching stories and publishing non-fiction reviews. I think my last major completed fantastic work was my OAC English project where I created a board game complete with 20-sided dice rolls before I realized computers could look after this for you.

These days, I find it easier to write code than prose but more rewarding to have prose framed by code. One is an escape from the other yet they both can work together to create interactive fiction. I like being to being able to slide from code to prose and blurring those lines.

so here is one more false start:

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The northern lights stirred as the passing meteor slipped through the night sky. It seemed to hang in the air like a bright emerald fleck trailed by fading stream as it arched over the isolated mining town. The sleeping dwarves beneath cared little about its sudden appearance, expect one who had been expecting it.

Alfric Seedstone, the town's eldest at well over 300 years old, didn't rush to do anything more anymore. He rolled over and out of bed onto the pick-axe scarred rock floor, and wrapped himself in thick hides that were sewn crudely together. Over the hides went a second layer of a heavy iron plates, polished to perfection over 100 years ago and now deeply pitted and dull, splattered with grease and dirt. They reflected no light crudely covered the crags of his skin that ringed his weary body and told the story of his life.

He murmured an a brief incantation and an faint wisp of an orb appeared and orbited between his hands, looping in and out of sculptured fingers several times before moving on to explore and warm the rest of his joints suffering for arthritis. Like the rest of his clan, Alfric was clinically blind from birth, and he didn't need the orb for light, but to ease his ancient body into motion.

Though blind, he knew his way around, and it paid to always put things back in their place. He located his ornate iron walking staff on its holder, which was too thick to allow his fingers to close around it. He favoured the top of this short staff, and rested the slabs of his fingers on its cool maned head, a forgotten beast, and clamped down to support his mass. Across his back, he slung a pack slash already full with some necessary equipment and then, feeling the orb ignite his limbs, he scuffled off to observe the strange wonder awaiting for him above.