Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales
Translated by Coldtaco
Edited by Aelryinth
After a good night’s rest, Chen Mo grabbed so breakfast and perford the usual brushing and washing while waiting for his ntal peak. When he was at his most awake, he used the mory Playback Potion and started looking through his forgotten mories.
His mory of the ga was murky, as Plants vs Zombies was released a while ago. Chen Mo was diligent when going through his mory, as any of it could contain important details about the ga, which could affect the quality of his clone.
The effects of the Potion settled in quickly, and Chen Mo returned to his mories from many years ago.
The first mories were the shapes of the plants: dragon-like peashooter[1], a certain-singer-whose-last-na-is-Gao-looking squash, the potato mine with the joystick on its head, the sunflower with the mysterious smile, the walnut with its eyes open like light bulbs...
After that were the various types of zombies: normal zombie, conehead zombie, pole-vaulting zombie, buckethead zombie, football zombie, dancing zombie...
There were also the different zones, such as the front lawn, night, pool, and so on.
As his mories cleared up, Chen Mo grabbed his drawing tablet and started making so sketches of the plants and zombies, paying particular attention to details and features in order to best recreate them.
Afterwards, Chen Mo started to recall the flow of the ga.
When the ga was started, the words that Crazy Dave said, from planting the first plants, beating the first zombie, to unlocking levels, unlocking new plants, beating the boss...
Chen Mo was making notes as he rembered, taking notes of everything noteworthy in detail for every level, such as the levels where plants were unlocked, and the levels where special modes were unlocked.
After that was the numbers.
The ti between shots of a peashooter, the damage increase that torchwood provided, the movent speed reduction of the winterlon, the health amounts of the various zombies...
These numbers might seem insignificant, but they could affect the entire structure of the ga. As Chen Mo’s coding abilities were limited, he could only resort to silly thods like this.
——
Four hours passed in a blink of an eye.
Chen Mo let out a sign of relief, as the past four hours he had been extrely focused. As he relaxed, he could feel his body catching up.
However, it wasn’t ti to rest. He used whatever still remained in his mory to fill out numbers he might’ve missed, as he was afraid to miss out on any detail.
mories of humans faded over ti. The mory Playback Potion could only guarantee free access to mories for four hours. Once it was over, the mories would slowly fade away.
——
After working two more hours, Chen Mo let out a deep breath, taking a sip of water while slouching in the chair.
The desktop had a design docunt filled with thousands of lines of the details for the ga. There was also a sketches folder filled with everything: sketches of plants, zombies, scenes, even the layout of the UI.
The mory Playback Potion was used by Chen Mo, right down to the last drop!
“Man, that was exhausting.” Chen Mo wiped the sweat off his forehead. He was about to break after staying highly focused for six hours.
But why did he put himself in such a difficult place? Because there was only one Potion! If there were two bottles, he could’ve done it with ease, one today and one tomorrow. He wouldn’t have to worry so much if he had eight whole hours to write down every single detail of the ga.
But Chen Mo knew that he had to make money and pay bills!
——
Chen Mo walked around, ate so snacks and a few pieces of chocolate, made a cup of coffee, and took a small break before going back to work.
Next up was to refine the design docunt, finalize so of the design details, and put it into the design docunt. The details might seem excessive, but had a great effect on the experience of the ga, so Chen Mo didn’t overlook any of it.
——
Sorting through the docunts took Chen Mo another week.
After a week, the design docunt of the ga was basically finalized. The details were also refined. The rules, layout, and the design of the plants and zombies were all finished.
Chen Mo then entered the rules into the video ga engine. It would then automatically generate a video ga project, which Chen Mo could then modify.
Generating the project took one to three days ti. The more rules there were, the more ti it would take.
Chen Mo wanted to use this ti to finalize all the calculations in the ga.
So basic attributes of the plants included damage, health, range, attack frequency, attack area, ready ti (activation ti after being placed down), cooldown (after placing down the plant), cost, damage to the environnt, and more.
Chen Mo wanted to list every attribute for every single plant and zombie, while constantly verifying it.
The numbers he had written down before were hugely helpful. The numbers between different plants and zombies could be cross-verified, making it much easier.
The number-crunching was completed in two days. As Chen Mo had huge lists of numbers in the details for reference, it wouldn’t be too different from the original from his previous life.
Next up was to test and adjust!
——
During this ti, the Illusion Ga Engine had generated the project, which Chen Mo temporarily nad PVZ. This was only a placeholder, a new and better na would have to be decided when the ga was released.
Chen Mo checked out so of the rules and chanics after opening up the project. There wasn’t much to do other than patching up so errors in the ruleset and so logical errors.
Afterwards, Chen Mo entered the various numbers into the Ga Engine, along with the various artwork of the plants and zombies. With that, a simple working demo was produced.
As of now, there wasn’t a tutorial or any levels.
Chen Mo initialized a scene and planted so peashooters, with a normal zombie at the other end.
Pop, pop, pop...
Under the relentless attacks of the peashooter, the zombie fell.
The tempo was alright. Chen Mo proceeded to test out a couple other zombies and plants, which had no problem. Other than adjusting a few numbers that didn’t feel quite right, everything else was OK.
Afterwards Chen Mo worked on the zones and level design.
Making the level flow was a highly technical part of level design. It needed to stimulate the player, not overwhelm the player.
Chen Mo had taken down a bunch of details on the layout of each level. The approximate numbers of zombies per level and when the plants were unlocked were all recorded, which made it a lot easier.
In five days ti Chen Mo fully developed the different zones and the flow of the levels, along with the tutorial. It seed the adventure mode of Plants vs Zombies had been successfully recreated by Chen Mo.
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T/L Note: [1] raws used dragon mother, which could refer to daenerys, which would be a bit weird.
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