One of the first things my wife said to me after we got married was “I knew you played video games, but I didn’t know how much you played them.”  The thing you have to know about programmers, no matter what they are or what they do today, they probably started out as a kid playing games on “something” with a video screen.  That kid is still in all of them, yearning to topple empires, win dogfights with a starship, or hack zombies to bits.

Which brings us to our most recent entry in the “Future Products” category.  You can’t swing a dismembered limb in a GameStop without smacking into a game with zombies in it.  Vampires may be in vogue with all the tweens  and moms, but zombies have the hearts of nerds around the world (take that Edward Cullen).  So why shouldn’t WE get in on the game.

Let’s think about this for a second…what kind of zombie game would *I* like to write? I’ve seen a lot of things done with (and to) zombies, but I’ve never seen an  RTS zombie game (NOTE: if there is one out there, please don’t tell me…it will spoil the illusion…I’ll have to buy it instead of dreaming about writing one…I’ll have to hide it from my wife…and my kids (who love zombies)…it won’t be pretty).  A few quick pen strokes and …

Zombie Apocalypse XXVII - 10,000 ft View

There you have it.  The 10,000 ft. view of the game.  The last “bastion” of humanity, trapped in…well trapped someplace and trying to survive.  All they need are some motivation to venture outside…like food, equipment, exercise by running away and screaming very loudly.  Let’s zoom in the camera a bit and take a look at what it might look like up close….

Zombie Apocalypse XXVII - 1,000 ft View

NOTE:  Please excuse the crudity of the drawings in both cases.  If I’m going to do a formal presentation, I will use formal tools.  But for informal brainstorming, I can crank out ideas on pages about 10 times faster this way.

A full 3-D world…but a small one.  To make up for the lack of artistic skills (and the lack of an art department for that matter), we (that is to say Nonlinear Ideas and its amazingly dedicated staff who follow my every whim…except when they don’t) will use the equivalent of cardboard cutouts for our “agents” moving about the board.

We’ll also avoid needing a path finding engine (and the tools to post-process the geometry files and create path nodes)  by using a simple terrain and simple flocking behaviors (i.e. seek) for moving agents about the game.

As for plot, we’ll re-imagine existing plots that (seem to) have worked for others in new and bold ways the originators would never have thought (i.e. steal what is not nailed down, dress it up, sell it fast, get out early).

Well, that’s it then.  Right.  That’s all you need to get a game started.  Nothing left now but to write the code, demo it to EA, sell the rights, retire to private island and fight off real pirates with our own private army.  Sort of like the game we’re talking about, but with real people.

Some time passes….

Well, I’ve submitted the drawings to the marketing department.  It seems they’ve wasted no time and jumped right on top of this with their (usual) crack analysis skills (see their response below).

Zombie Apocalypse XXVII - Response from Marketing

Maybe next time…