Dalek War
Play Dalek War Here: https://dredscabral.github.io/DalekWar_Page/index.html
About the author’s inspiration
The whole idea of studying game started when I choose to take a game programming course. I knew it would be a challenge because I am not a real gamer. I used to play games when I was I kid, but I was a long time ago. I knew I had a lot to learn before start thinking about creating a game.
I am not a gamer, but I am a Doctor Who fan. So, why not use the fantastic world of Doctor who as inspiration to create my own game?
Who are the most famous, loved and hated characters in Doctor Who World? The Daleks for sure!
Also, it matches the game I choose to develop: top-down tank game. The Daleks have a gun, they enjoy fighting, and they make sounds that I could use in my game. It was just perfect the idea of having a Dalek as a tank.
The game world includes the Doctor Who’s scenarios and other sci-fi elements. Especially in the episode “Battle of Tranquil Repose”, as shown in the image below.
As expected, not everything went perfectly. LOL
To better explain the glory and difficulties of this game development, I’ve divided it into roles, as follows.
Software Engineer (SE)
From the perspective of the SE, I might say it was hard to deal with GitHub repository. Not because it was hard to use GitHub, I think GitHub is awesome and an excellent tool to keep track of projects.
I would say I should have spent more time thinking than coding. Because I changed my original idea so many times, my first project wasn’t easier to reuse, so I had to create a new repository because it was easier than dealing with the conflicts.
Definitively, coding went right! I like coding, I ever did. Before studying software engineering, I studied electrical engineering for 5 years, and during that time I always tried to do something related to coding. Most projects I participated involved coding, C++. Long story, but then, I decided that I should work with something more related to coding.
So, I’m glad I could use my experience with coding to create something different from what I was used to. Coding involves creativity, but game programming involves 10 times creativity. Because it must work, and it must to be fun. So, double responsibility.
I would change the planning time. I would spend more time thinking so I would waste less time changing. True story.
Producer / Project Manager (PM)
The project was done by the end, so I think even though with some difficulty, the work was done by the end. So, overall, the management went right.
We had one week less than a usual semester, so it was hard to keep tracking of tasks and deadlines. For this reason, I focused on the working project over the documentation.
To try to apply time management techniques could be an option.
Artist / Sound Engineer (AS)
Doctor Who theme was an excellent choice because of there a huge audio source with this theme. I could use a couple of audios in my game successfully.
I used only two audios in this game: one as the opening and the other for the Dalek shooting. You can check them in the links below.
Theme
The game theme is based on the opening theme of Doctor Who.
Explosion
The explosion sound is played when the player shots his or her gun.
I would say I could include more audios in this game to make it even more fun.
Game Designer (GD)
In my opinion, this is the funniest and hardest role in game development. However, it worth it. Dealing with the entire game and joint it all together is not the easiest task, for sure.
To work on the game design was a personal discovery and challenge for me.
It was a long time ago since I drew my last drawing before this game development.
I had to think about the players, enemies, power-ups, everything that the users will see and the game flow.
Sketches
The original idea was to look at Doctor Who from a different perspective having the Doctor as the boss enemy.
I started drawing some elements on paper some characters. The first one I used on one of my lab assignments, the Doctor. Actually, I didn’t choose any of the male doctors because I thought it was cool to have a female great character in this game.
I know I’m not an artist, but I’m proud of myself because I didn’t spect to be able to draw not even a line. LOL
I got the idea from this image here:
I know it’s not even close, but at least I learned something new.
Then, I started thinking how I would draw a Dalek, the main character of this game. So, I started drawing something.
The battlefields
First, I just drew something to test the code while I was thinking what elements I could include.
Another thing I realized at that time was that the Dalek drawings I did before were useless for this type of game, Top-Down. It seems just weird to me. So I decided to draw what would be the top view of that previous drawing.
QA Tester (QA)
Tests were done during the coding process to check if the game functionalities were going well.
Game Final version
The game scenes were divided into Menu, Instructions, Main (Game Playing), and Game Over, as follows.
Menu Scene
Menu Scene - Selecting Instructions option
Instructions Scene
Main Scene - Start
Main Scene - Playing
Game Over Scene
The End
After all work, I was tired, but happy because I could learn a lot from that.
Play Dalek War Here:
https://dredscabral.github.io/DalekWar_Page/index.html
