Vampires in Space

This game actually started out quite different from how the released version turned out. In fact, the game started out as a space game which I was writing for Windows using C++ in an attempt to regain some of my DirectX knowledge as a larger project I was planning was going to be written in C++. I won’t go into any details about the larger project as it is not very relevant to this game, though the DirectX game is partially important to this game so lets briefly take a look at that game.

The space game, with the working title of Project C1 (I am not going to explain my old esoteric naming convention we use to use, newer projects will be named after stellar objects), had the player in control of a space station during some type of invasion attempt. The player would control the gun of a space station. The station itself would be mobile, meaning that the player would always be in the center of the screen. Missiles would come from the edges of the screen, which the player would have to shoot down.

How did the space station turn into a crossbow wielding vampire hunter and the missiles turn into bats? Quite simply, I noticed that Halloween was coming up and needed a game for that occasion. I knew that the colored squares that were being shot down by a big square in the center of the screen was enjoyable. I also knew that the squares could be anything I wanted them to be. It took a while to come up with vampires, but once I did, the crossbow became the obvious weapon of choice (even though they are illegal in BC). As the hero was now human, movement became an issue. Originally I thought about requiring the player to pick up bolts for the crossbow (which is something that the deluxe version of Vampire Attack, if ever created, will have) but knew I didn’t have that much time especially since I was going to have to port the game to either Java or Flash as I didn’t want to release a platform specific game unless absolutely necessary.

While I do prefer Java, Flash has a bit better support for rotating objects – at least compared to standard Java 1.1 which is the version of java that I code my applets to (though I may finally start coding for more modern versions of java soon). As time was short, the decision to go with Flash for the game was the best decision.