Development journal

When I worked on the game, I kept a journal which I am now posting here. The number before every entry is the number of hours spent on the game by that point. This game's budget was 40 hours of work.

1 - downloaded Godot and spent some time reading documentation

2 - doing the tutorial

3 - doing the first game tutorial in Godot

4 - still tutorial

5 - tutorial for 2d games finished. Started thinking about the game itself. Got a game idea, but for later, as that one will need proper art.

5.5 - came up with another game idea, but it's bigger than budget for this game

6.5 - came up with a good idea - zombie shooter game

7.5 - started looking for sprites, found some but not all yet

8.5 - found main character sprites, revised weapon types into weapon powerups so that animating is easier, created a development plan, created the godot project. Next step is to create the player

9.5 - created a basic player node, added the player sprite and movement. Next step is to add a walking animation for the player

10 - Added a walking animation for the player. Added a zombie with a walking animation. Made the zombie walk towards the player. Next step is to add some simple shooting so that the player can kill the zombie

11 - Added player shooting animation and added a simple bullet that flies out of the player. Next step is to make the zombie detect collision with the bullet and die

12 - Added zombie collision and dying animation and made the zombie die. Next step is to make zombie attack the player and make the player die

13 - Added attack animation for zombie and made the player die. Added the shooting sound. Had an issue where the bullet collided with the player, but resolved by adding the player to collision exceptions. Next step is to add an airdrop functionality

14 - Added a simple airdrop that currently spawns after a zombie dies. Added a simple powerup that improves weapon fire rate, this is activated on airdrop pickup and lasts several seconds. Next step is to add a zombie-dropped powerup.

16 - Recoded powerups, added a zombie dropped powerup that enables instakill. Started working on HUD for powerups

16.5 - managed to get one powerup displayed on screen when it's active, started working on the main menu

17.5 - Created a simple main menu, made it switch to root scene, and made the main menu appear again after the player dies. Next step is to implement a zombie spawner.

18 - started working on spawning zombies in root node, managed to get one zombie spawned in the beginning of the game. Next step is make him respawn infinitely

18.5 - made the zombie spawn infinitely. Added two more zombie types and made the spawner select a random one. Changed collision layers so the bullets don't collide with airdrops and powerups. Next step is to see if more zombie types can be added from another set of sprites

19 - reviewed other zombie sprites that I have and decided that they don't fit visually with the first three. Changed a bit how powerups work, added a damage increase airdrop powerup. Next step is to add more of them

19.5 - added shotgun powerup. Now trying to make Nuke powerup work

20- Made nuke work and added a sprite for it. Next step is to make characters switch animations between left and right

21 - added animation flipping. Started working on spawning zombies, there was an issue cause by zombies colliding with each other and pushing each other to the middle of the screen. I fixed it by ensuring that zombies don't collide with each other, but now they are sometimes on top of each other, which looks bad. Next step is to try to enable collision again but somehow avoid the pushing issue.

22 - fixed the collision issue by not spawning zombies close to each other. Scaled everything down, so the characters are smaller, it looks better this way. Created a pausing functionality. Next step is to implement a score counter on HUD

23 - implemented a simple score counter, found the sprites for the missing powerups, next step is to add them to the hud

23.5 - added all powerups to the hud, started working on credits screen

24.5 - finished the credits screen, without text for now. Made sure that it is possible to navigate back to the main menu. Adjusted the player's shooting animation position. Next step is to do the same for zombie dying animation

25.5 - adjusted zombie dying animations to be square. Next step is to add an offset to some of these animations because they look a bit off

26 - fixed zombie dying animations. Started looking for a good background. For now I'm thinking that a top-down view of a four lane road might work, with some animated fog over it. Would be cool to make some zombies spawn underneath the fog and some above.

26.5 - found a road sprite and added it as the background. Found a fog tutorial and added the moving fog. Next step is to improve bullet sprite

27 - replaced bullet sprite with a fireball, removed the bullet from the player attack sprites, added a probability when spawning powerups

28 - added a probability when spawning powerups, made airdrops spawn with a probability, limited player movement to screen bounds, made player shoot instantly on Space, made zombies fade-out when they die. Next step is to make powerups bigger / more visible

28.5 - fixed dropped powerup type, made powerups bigger, disabled zombie collision when dying. Next step is to make it possible to shoot while walking

29.5 - separated top and bottom animations, allowed the player to shoot while walking. Started editing the bottom animation frames, because they contain character hands. Next step is to finish that

30 - Removed hands from the rest of the frames of the walking animation. Found sounds for nuke, powerups, airdrop pickups, airdrop plane sound, and some music that can be used. Next step is to finish searching for sounds and then incorporate the sounds into the game.

30.5 - Added background music to the main scene, next step is to add more sounds

31.5 - Finished adding sounds, next step is to add difficulty increase. I think it should increase every 50 kills, but only counting real kills, without nuke kills

32.5 - added the difficulty increase, added the parachute for airdrops, fixed bullet position, made it so that the nuke kills do not trigger airdrops or powerup drops. Next step is to display high score in main menu after death

33.5 - added high score display to the main menu. Started gathering all links for the credits screen. Next step is to check carefully all of the sprites and sound to make sure I don't forget anything

34 - almost done collecting all links for the credits screen. Can's seem to find where I got one of the powerup icons

35 - finished adding the credits, changed the volume to be decreased by default, and reset the volume of all audio components to 0.0, except the shooting sound which was too loud, so I made it -7. Next step is to add some hint about what the controls are, and the game will be ready

36 - added a hint for controls, downloaded godot export templates, exported to html and to .exe. Seems to be working well, except the file size is a bit large. Next step is to create all the assets for releasing, such as game icon, game art, some screenshots, and description.

37 - created the game icon, screenshots and description. Next step is to create a cover image

37.5  - started working on the cover image, will do the bonk meme

38 - finished the cover image. Started looking for a game jam that this can be submitted to. Found some that may be suitable, but out of time for now. Next step is to go through more game jams and release

38.5 - further filtered the jams, only two are suitable for my game. Created the itch page, but as a draft. Next step is to finish the page and submit the game to jams

39 - all done