Bad Halo reference aside, I'm making a small zombie game in C++ for the contest. It'll actually be a dual stick shooter/tower defense hybrid featuring power ups, defenses, weapons, and levels you can freely transverse.

I don't have a screenshot atm, but I am making very good progress. XD

That sounds like a very fun game, Homer! I look forward to seeing your progress throughout the contest. What sort of extra things besides C++ are you using? I assume you're targeting Windows?

I am using the SFML Library and hopefully I can include the SPARK Particle Engine.

My development will be primarily on Windows, however I can compile for Linux.

Oh good, so both of those libraries are cross-platform? Windows should be fine for the purposes of contest judging, but I'd definitely recommend that you include the ability to build for Windows and Linux if (and you should! ) release source.

Ok, I have a screenshot of my current progress, although it's simple truth be told.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10573921/ZombieKillingSpree_1.png

(I made it a link since the screenshot's a bit large)

Those white dots are bullets that you are firing.

I recently added weapon accuracy as well, so there's a small variance when it comes to the direction of bullets although it's not shown in the screenshot.

The final game probably won't look anything like this though.

I would make the bullets much bigger - I can hardly see them ^^

Nice work, though. Is this going to be similar to geowars?

Somewhat. I'm thinking more along the lines of "I made a game with Zombies in it". But I may very well save me the effort and make it more like GeoWars. XD

I've already changed the bullets to be lines, so they're a bit more visible.

I was going to second leafy's suggestion, HOMER, but you already addressed it. I'm glad to see that you're already getting started, and I anticipate more screenshots as you go.

Progress XD

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10573921/ZombieKillingSpree_2.PNG

That's the MiniGun being shown.

Very nice! Everything seems to be a lot easier to see now that you switch to thicker and line bullets.

Here's the newest screenshot. I have healthbars and an ammo counter.



That's the shotgun btw!

I'm having a little trouble trying to display ∞ when you have the handgun equipped though. However I'm close to figuring that one out.

Is the problem just an issue with your character encoding, ie, using Unicode instead of ASCII? And I assume the purple scatter there are shotgun bullets?

It could possibly be that. I know that Googling the issue doesn't help much though :/

The purple scatter are the rounds, yes. In-game they are more visible though since they appear to be longer than in the picture.

That makes sense. Anyway, do you need any assistance with your Unicode problem? As you know, you can't post specific code for us to help you fix, but if you could describe the general problem better, perhaps we could assist you in finding guides to help.

Well, I went for help on the SFML site and I was told that I basically have to load my own font and pass a charset containing the symbol, which I have done. The problem may come from the fact that I'm trying to use Arial and Arial may not support it.

Have you used Windows' CharMap program to double-check that Arial does in fact contain that particular character? Have you tried swapping out some other much-used font that might have it?

I have checked. It does contain it at U+221E

I have also tried other fonts, but to no avail, unfortunately.

Got a video of what I have thus far.

The framerate is not nearly that low in reality however. It's actually ~50-60 fps.

(Anyone know of a better screen recorder?)

It's been a long time since I've updated this thread.

Something minor, I've decided to change the name from "Zombie Killing Spree" to "System Crash"

I like that new name a lot better. Thank you for submitting your finished entry to the contest, by the way; best of luck!