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                       Gnome Guard
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         * ludumdare 48 hour game competition *

                   * entry by networm *

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           Story (only read if you are bored)
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In this game, you play the role of the Gnome Guard. You have
to guard and protect a group of small gnomes, who have lost
their way home. This sounds quite easy, but it is not.

For one, you don't have much time. It gets dark very quickly
in Gnomeland, and once the night sets in, evil creatures
will arise and eat all the poor gnomes still helplessly
wandering around. You will never see this though, because
it's your job to not let it happen.

The second, and as serious problem, are the gnomes 
themselves. You thought, you can just tell them where to go,
and they follow? You obviously never had anything to do with
gnomes before. They will never do what anyone tells them.

With one exception, the Gnome Guard. As Gnome Guard, you 
have two ways to interact with the gnomes. You can guard
them, and you can protect them.

The former you do by using the Gnome Beacon. It's a magical
instrument, which emits a high frequency voice only audible
to gnomes - and they will follow it. Or rather, they will
blindly run to its direction.

This is where you will need your instrument of protection:
Which is - barriers. Simple, effective barriers, which not
even gnomes can penetrate if built with no leaks.
(Especially note this last point: Only the smallest gap, and
your barrier is as good as if it wasn't there. Gnomes are
able to slip thru the even smallest gap - and when in panic
they will do so, even if they fall into the trap behind.)
(Yes, there will be traps.)

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                        Controls
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Mouse-Right: Place Beacon + Clear Barriers
Mouse-Left:  Place Barriers

Use cursor keys to scroll.

The box in the ground is the exit, where the gnomes jump in
to get home (they live under the earth, and I ran out of
time to make an animation).

The red boxes are traps, and gnomes die if they fall into
it.

Blocks can't be penetrated, same as water - but you can set
the beacon (the green column) in the water. The brown
columns are the barriers.

Gnomes can slip through edges, so be sure to place enough
barriers.

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                      How I made this
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The gnome animation and the tiles were made with PovRay. (In
fact, I spent most of the time of the competition editing
POV scripts.) See the COMPETITION LOG file for a log file I
kept, also http://ludumdare.com for screenshots during the
competition.
The code itself is very simple, using the Allegro lib for
bitmaps, text, sounds, timing and input.


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                      Compiling
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see INSTALL file

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                       License
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see LICENSE file

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If for any reason you might want to contact the author, try
mailing to elias@users.sf.net or go to efnet #allegro.
