Thoughts about Zombies ate my Nation

In my previous blog I posted a fun little video I made to pump myself up for the idea of Zombies ate my Nation. I'm still getting pumped up just thinking about the idea.

After watching a lot of Mars Attacks videos, with Danny Elfman's score thumping in the background, the style of the game became obvious to me. It has to be just as crazy as Zombies ate my Neighbors was - this was a MUST.

But something had to change... Something did not settle very well with my gut feelings. Should this be the classic 2D style? Or 3D? With 2D, I run the risk of the game being boring - as we already played Zombies ate my Neighbors. I also run the risk of 3D - being a low budget sloppy mess. I decided I HAD to give 3D a try. It just seems practical.

I already looked around online to check out some art assets, and of course I came across the well known 3DRT.com. I checked out their zombie pack, and was absolutely sold! They come WITH torque .DTS objects AND they are already animated, for just 84 bucks.

www.3drt.com/3dm/characters/zombie/zombie-swarm-shots.htm

Not only that, but the style and animations of the package fits incredibly with that "Mars Attacks" kind of over the top humor.



I couldnt believe my luck!!!! The Zombie for the game is already made! I just have to cough up 84 bucks and I already have my first characters in the game!

But now I face a problem = There are so many unique characters from the original game. How lucky can I get to find the exact characters I need, with the same polycount, with the same animation style, and the same visuals? I need miracle, or my other option would simply be contract work with 3D studio services (and we all know how expensive that can get).

I was also thinking deeply about the music. I simply need good music. So, I went to MySpace and did a music search for "Zombie", just to see what magical music groups I could find. Much to my dismay, I absolutely fell in love with a group (or 1 girl army) called Zombie Girl.

profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=38953951

GREAT! Now if I can make this game look decent, I can ask this girl and swoon her into making some special tunes for this special project - with a profit reward of course.

Right now I'm just trying to piece together things in my mind. This project is probably going to be a huge undertaking, but I have the feeling if I can get this bad boy off to a decent start and generate enough interest, I'll gather some incredibly talented folks to make this happen.

The truth is I'm not a simple thinker, and I have heard time and time again to start off with simple games. This is just impossible for my brain to process. I can't dream of releasing some mundane project. I just can't do it. I'm not in this for the bucks, I'm in this to blast electricity into the brains of gamers.
I try to think of simple games, then proceed to say "it would be cool if it had this, and you could do this, and if this happened, and if this cutscene happened." It just keeps getting complex.

So Zombies ate my Nation... I wonder how this is going to work out. I still have a spikey haired kid with 3D glasses, a chick with a pony-tail, steroid induced hockey masked men with chainsaws and far more to think about.

I think it's time I start getting the pen and paper out, plan things out and see how far the zombie head rolls....