The Story of Mount Everest Story (1)

A few years ago I read the book "Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster" by Jon Krakauer. It tells the story of the Mount Everest Tragedy in 1996. I also read "The Climb" by Anatoli Boukreev and "Ultimate High - my Everest Odyssey" by Göran Kropp. Boukreev was one of the main guides and was partially accused of what happened. Göran Kropp turned down only one hour from the summit on the day before the disaster.

I was fascinated by the story. The sites, the psychology, the characters, the drama...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_Thin_Air

Making a game about Mount Everest came up as an idea about then. I had a strong idea about the gameplay. I wanted to focus on the places and the people. As a player one should only have to make one type of decision: when to climb. The idea was also that the game would revolve around three main attributes of the climbers: Condition, Acclimatization and Morale. Further I wanted times and places to be as authentic as possible. The game takes place between April 18 and May 31, which is when the real expeditions are carried out. The simulated climbing times are as realistic as possible. For example, a climber in reasonably good condition takes 5-6 hours to climb Lhotse Face.

The first prototype was build in 2012 with YoYo's GameMaker environment. GameMaker is a fantastic and very underrated high-level programming environment. It has evolved over the years and can be used for rather advanced programming. It also has extensive, mature and well-developed education resources and tutorials. For me, GameMaker was an incredible first gaming programming environment.

http://www.yoyogames.com/

developer1@jabatoba.com

Stockholm 2015-05-22