Dozen Days of Words
Episode 1: Scrambled Chain
 Read-me File

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

Dozen Days of Words episode 1:Scrambled Chain
copyright (c) 2008-2009 Blazing Games Inc.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307  USA

GNU gave me the following clarification about Flash programs:
As a clarification, for the purposes of Section 3, the Flex SDK
is considered to be the 'compiler' for .swf files and the Adobe Flash
Player is considered to be 'part of the operating system on which the
executable runs'.

REVISION HISTORY

December 21, 2008 - Created the first Build of the Game (tile testing)

ABOUT DOZEN DAYS PENTALOGY

The history of the Dozen Days Pentalogy is kind of mixed up. Initially, for
a brief stint when I was going to make Blazing Games have daily updates 
(back in the time when I had hopes of turning Blazing Games into something 
more than a hobby) I decided that I would have a series of games that were
created in a single day. Just after announcing the project, I got a real
third-party project and had to cancel my daily update plans as well as put
on hold the Dozen Days project. 

I then had an idea for a single game that would combine the 60 games
(5 series of 12 games) that made up the planned series. The first epi
was created and then I ended up again putting the series on hold. 

The next time I came back to the series, I decided to go back to the
original game in a day roots and create each episode of the series as a
game-in-a-day challenge. This was successfully done for the first series in
the game, Dozen Days of Dice. In Dice, the only code/assets that I allowed
myself to use was code/assets that I created for earlier episodes in the
series. Code-reuse actually did play a huge part in the development of the
later episodes when I switched from Flash development to Flex development
due to Flex being more Open Source Friendly. There was one problem. Finding
a whole day to develop the game in was proving to be quite a challenge. So
in November of 2008 I had a poll on my site asking if people cared if the
games in the series were developed in a single day or if I could switch
to a multiple-session development format but would still restrict the
development time to under 24 hours. 

For the Second series, Dozen Days of Words, I switched to that  multi-session
format. At the time I am writing that, the series is just underway so I will
update this section when I start season 3 of this game in 2010.

ABOUT DOZEN DAYS OF WORDS

The rules for developing this season is similar to the rules I applied last
season. I will only use the libraries provided with Flash/Flex for developing
the games but will allow myself to use any code/assets that was developed for
earlier episodes of this series or previous seasons of the Dozen Days 
Pentalogy (in other words, Dozen Days of Dice as that is the only
earlier season).

Work will be done in four blocks. Each block will be 3 to 6 hours long and by
the end of the block I will have a compilable build ready so those who want to
follow the development of the game can see how it progresses. While I will be
flexible with when I do the work blocks, most likely they will be worked on
every Sunday afternoon as Sundays are my day of rest and this series is a
personal project even though it is being given to Blazing Games Inc.

Readers of my Blazing Games Development Blog 
( http://blazinggames.blogspot.com/ ) will be given early access to the
development journal that is being kept as the episodes are developed so if you
want to watch the development of this series you may wish to subscribe to my
blog.

POSTING GAME ON WEBSITES

This is a flex game that can be compiled with the freely available
Flex3SDK or later. The .as files are the source files for the game.
If you have enough space, I would recommend having the distribution
zip file on your site. If you do not post the distribution file, then
please provide a link to www.BlazingGames.com so visitors can get the 
distribution. 

PROGRAMMING NOTES

This is part of the Dozen Days of Words series and as such was created in a 
single day. There is a development journal outlining how this game was created
on the Blazing Games site.

