Sleep Is For The Weak. And The Sane.

I have no idea if its been a week or not since my last post. Everything beyond a few days before....uh....yesterday....is a blur. I vaguely recall going to class somewhere and ending up being seated behind a huge white pillar and having to stare at it for the entire class. Also something about gay sex on the computer screen, alcohol, Robot Chicken, kittens (particularly one named Sophie), and a metric fuckton of development on my projects.

No matter.

The last one is the one I want to talk to you today, all you total of three people who will end up reading this.

The zombie game has been splashed, after a huge step back, with a healthy, steaming bucket of perspective.
Right now, we have three people on our team, and oh man if it doesn't take at least three times that many to make even the simplest of RTS games.
I can at least say with confidence that in terms of design and art, we have just about as many people we'd need (barring cutscenes, but Ramon's apparently all over that).
There's me, and there's Ramon. One (me) on general art, texturing, and all the rough-and-tumble 2d design work including interface design, drawing pictures of zombies, designing levels, writing up design docs, laughing maniacally, and killing hookers. One of those isn't actually true. Ramon is on everything else, namely, the 3d stuff, namely, modelling, animating and the cutscene that he's working on for 430. This ensures a pretty constant and even workflow for the both of us.

Which leaves George.

George has gotta shoulder everything else that's -not- art. The code, basically. I've told him that I'll help him with any code that he needs. I've also made some hefty recommendations that we need more programmers, but based on his generally cold-shoulder reaction to all of it (he wants to pull it all himself) and all the humming-and-hawing and subject-changing that he did while we were talking about the prospect of getting more people to help with programming, I'm not sure how likely that is to happen.
I don't know George too well. I'm not gonna make any judgements on his capabilities, in fact, I've heard from a bunch of sources that he's a hand with the stuff. We'll see how it goes.
In the meantime I'll hope this entire thing doesn't turn into some sort of cosmic horror and eat me.

On the lighter sides of the news, thousands of capitalist pigs are sure to die in a space shuttle crash on the moon.

No wait, that's from Airplane.

On the lighter sides of the news, we've made some progress. We've settled on an engine to develop this thing off of.

BEHOLD. IRRLICHT. -ENSTEIN.

Yes we've chosen the Irrlicht engine to wrangle this thing to the ground with. With luck, we'll have better luck than Steve Irwin did with the stingrays.

In art news, I'm currently typing up a design doc, which first and foremost will outline what will be done by the end of the semester. Its not going to be a working game. In fact, it wont' even be a fully developed demo level. But it will be something, and you will be able to both blow up zombies and use zombies to eat people's faces.

And for now, really, that's enough.

In the meantime, the full Design Doc for the game is going to be written in case we want to pick this up at some later time, and all the designs will continue in spite of the pace of the rest of the game.

BUT ENOUGH TALK

GIMME MY WAFFLE SUNDDAAAAAEEE-

I mean

GIMME MY PICTURES OF ZOMBBIIIEEEZZZZZ-






These are just a few of the zombie designs I've dredged up, only about three of which will probably be in the game.

Coming up:
THE PATHETIC HUMAN FORCES

Fuckall I'm never going to get any sleep.

PLACES! LIGHTS! GET THOSE CURTAINS UP!

A year ago I left this little scrap of blog to the wild, dark and forbidding depths of the interwebs.

But a good creator never forgets about his baby, so here I am, after a yearlong hiatus full of sex, drugs and rock n' roll, except without the sex, drugs and rock n' roll.

Now you all may be wondering "But Patrick, an entire year has gone by! Surely you'll tell us about what's been going on, and relate to us all of the crazy adventures/wild parties/bear hunting expeditions/explorations of lost civilizations/mary-had-a-little-lamb-riding-a-goddamned-unicorn experiences that you've had? Or at least tell us what lamb-sacrificing insanities you're up to now!"
And boy, wouldn't I.

But I won't. I won't go into everything I've done in the past year because if I would, this post would be a ga-fucking-zillion pages long, and I'd be so laden down with hubris I wouldn't be able to walk to class without looking like a long-haired, asian Quasimodo.

As for the now, its September, and once again I'm loaded with more projects than Southern Chicago.
Let's go through a quick tally shall we?
-"Dusk of the Dead" a real time strategy game
-"Royal and Manchester, Cybernet P.I.s" a animation
-"Euphoria Inc." a graphic novel
-"Hellhounds On My Trail" a graphic novel
-"They Came From The Internet" a webcomic

An RTS, a 3d animation, TWO graphic novels and a webcomic. Out of these five projects, only two of them are -not- related to school, and those are the last two. I held back from going forward with Hellhounds On My Trail as a class project because as far as I know, AK isn't going to get me the next part of the script for the thing until he's fifty fucking years old, and I personally feel the webcomic could be kept up without any people stabbing me in the face to get me to do the work.

Needless to say, I got my work cut out for me this semester.

Of particular interest though, is the new game that I'm working on: Dusk of the Dead.
Yes, its a real time strategy game, its going to be a fully functional real time strategy game. Yes, its a play on "Dawn of the Dead," and yes...its a real time strategy game about zombies.
I'm working on this with two other guys, one is in charge of programming, the other is in charge of 3d animation and modelling, and me? I'm in charge of game design, specs, texturing, sound design, catering, being the fluffer, and all the things that no one else really wants to do. HAH, just kidding, I don't cater.

Are you excited? I am.

The basic idea is thus. Like any good real time strategy worth its salt, there are two sides to the conflict. And like any good zombie game, its set in an urban environment that's been completely and utterly destroyed.
The two sides are, to be expected, humans and zombies.
The humans are your typical real time strategy peoples. They collect resources, and crank near limitless amoutns of new units out of clown-car like factories, build fortifications, and send out waves of units to conquer the opposition/survive the impossibly huge onslaught.
The zombies are a little different. We haven't quite decided on a solid scheme for how they'll be implemented but my thoughts are thus: they collect resources, but instead of pulling stuff out of mines and piles of junk lying around, like the humans do, they have an entirely different set of resources: bodies.
The idea is in this hopeless, remnants-of-human-civilization world, not only will there be packs of congregated civilians seeking refuge in barely protected shelters, there will be bodies littering the streets of our cities, and using these bodies, the undead will bolster their forces.

I think its solid.
No.
I think its absolutely fucking kickass.

And this thing is going to be made. Dammit.