Zombie Killa: Postmortem

My Background:

I just graduated from college and I'm trying to get a job. Hopefully in the game industry. I needed something to jump start my demo programming for the summer, and this did it quite well for me

Game Background:

Basiclly after I saw the zombie theme, and it stuck in my brain. It's just your plain ol' wack-a-zombie-with-a-baseball-ball sort of action game.

What went right

1. Good design

After some inital hacking together a map editor, I started design in ernst. My favorite design pattern did wonders for me as it ussually does, and my state machine went together well. Most projects I do some UML and stuff in MS Visio, but this time I just did it on paper. It worked, but there Some classes I designed on the fly, and I paid for it.

2. Libraries

I can't really say this enough, but SDL is so freaking easy to use. Then on top of that SDL_Image does alpha blending for .png's automagicly. Plus my code might run under linux. Plus the STL was good to me as well. Vectors and pairs were my two favorites for this project. BTW, I used Microsoft Visual Studio .NET with unmanaged C++ as my compiler.

4. Art

My art came together pretty well. Maybe I spent about 18 hours on art total. SDL doesn't do text very well, so right away I chose to just do static art for all the breifing screens and menu screen. I used Milkshape 3D to render players and zombies, and Photoshop 6 and The Gimp for making tiles and converting the Milkshape renders into something usefull.

5. Going 2D

Going 2D made it much easier to finish and be playable.

6. Good times in the IRC

It was fun talking with those guys about everything from programming troubles, to physics, to zombie movies, to trout, to etc...

What went wrong

1. Bad design

It was just a downward spiral after I started using switch/case logic too much. There were functions in the wrong classes and other weird things. Fortunatly I remembered most of the weird things I did.

2. No sound

I had all the code ready for playing sounds, but I just didn't have time to do sounds. I finished up the levels with an hour to go and started making sounds, but it took too long. So i just packaged it up without sounds.

3. No animation

It took me long enough for the art I had. Just two frames of animation would have nearly doubled my art resources. Oh well it's still fun. BAM!

4. Too much sleep!

I managed with 4 hours of sleep saturday morning, but slept 9 on Sunday when I was shooting for 5. Note to self: next time set the alarm.

5. Forgetting to eat

Somehow it was hard to find time to eat. Next time I keep food next to my computer.

6. Weird times in the IRC

Simulated msg:
???:HILO, fReind!
Slate: Do I know you?
???: No silly friend :)
???: Have U time for chat?
???: Please come to #yomoma, friend
Slate: Can't, I'm working on a project.
???: That's cute name, friend!
Slate: ...
???: Friend, where u from?
???: I from Brazil.

I have no problems with Brazil or people that don't know english very well... but how come when ever I go on IRC and random people msg me, they are from Brazil? Do I have an IRC stalker from Brazil? How does he/she find me no matter the network? Is he/she some sort of robot and/or zombie? If so what sort of super powers does he/she have other than being able to locate me? Is he/she a super villian or super hero? If super hero, does that make me a super villian?

IRC tended to be distracting, but it was good to break at times and chat.

Summary:

Hours of sleep(/planned): 13/9
Cans of Cherry Coke drank(/total): 10/12

Somehow I made a neat game that I'm proud of. I even have fun playing it! I know no one will hire me on the basis of this game, but that wasn't the point. That point was to finish a game in 48 hours and have fun doing it.