DeadCityNights is a pixel art adventure game/platformer developed in C++ using raylib.
- Multiple Locations: City streets, apartment, a cemetery, and more.
- Combat: Shoot zombies with guns.
- Inventory System: Collect items like car keys and a shovel.
- NPC Dialog: Randomized phrases from NPCs you encounter on the street.
- Take Drugs: Buy drugs off of a dealer on the street.
- Shader Effect: Different shader effects will play depending on the situation.
- Voice Acting: Custom made zombie grunts and moans.
I've been programming in python and making games in Godot with gd script for like 4 years. I've always wanted to learn C++ so I could eventually make bigger and better things. I thought a good way to learn C++ would be to make a game in it. I've seen people on the internet using raylib and I thought it would be perfect for my needs. I have used pygame a little in the past and knew how a game loop worked, so all this knowledge transfered over to cpp and raylib. The syntax is a little different but I'm still doing the same things I did in Godot I just dont have a GUI to place things in the world, and all the classes and structures I need to make myself, but I find that to be the fun part. Since this is my first thing in cpp I wanted to keep it simple and do what I know. So this game is like minimalist art. I started by taking a pixel art image I had made and slowly made it more and more interactive. I added a player character and a camera, then pedestrians, then other areas, and so on.
There are 16 different areas you can visit. The player character has an apartment and a car. You can use the car to drive to different areas like the park, or the cemetery. You encounter zombies in the cemetery as part of a story arc I'm working on. You combat zombies with three different types of guns. Ammo is limited so you'll be needing to use all of them. Zombies rise from their grave on either side of the player when spawning in. This makes the combat a bit tricky and fun.
Besides the combat there are also NPCs to interact with. On main street of the game there are generic NPCs of different types that walk back and forth to different randomly set destinations. They will give one line greeting to the player. There are also special NPCs. Like the drug dealer, fortune teller, and police man. There is also a story character. A hobo who lives in the vacant lot by your apartment. He warns you about the zombies and gives you certain needed items.
I've been working on the game for 9 months now. It is playable from start to finish. I'm going to take a break for a while and decide what I want to do with the game. Maybe some new idea will come to me and I'll have to added it to the game, but I'm allready thinking of what I want to make next.
This game has been a huge learning experience. I feel like I've leveled up my programming skills drastically. Using the C++ knowledge I gained from this, I can either do something 3d in raylib, or try to learn UE5. I know UE5 uses C++, but I would still have to learn the editor and that's harder than learning programming sometimes. Either way I want to make something in 3d.
I post about making the game on twitter. https://x.com/J_Hyde_ Check out the other games I have made. https://jhyde.itch.io