Barchok Blog

Rabbit Tycoon was created as part of a “make a game in 30 days” competition on the SA forums. Out of about 20-30 initial entries, there were only 7 or so game submitted. The theme was “based on a book”, and was followed to various degrees by the competitors. In my case, I decided to go with Watership Down as the book, and thus, base my game on the idea that you need to build a new burrow for the rabbits to live in.

It was originally supposed to be at least somewhat complex, having to direct rabbits to food, and build the burrow correctly so it wouldn’t collapse. It ended up being a game where you direct one rabbit to dig holes in the ground, and it had a 90% chance of crashing without an error once more rabbits appeared. The actual burrow digging and building, originally designed to be similar to Dungeon Keeper, turned out workable, but building the burrow rooms was simply a matter of plunking down single tiles where you feel like it.

What Went Right

Admittedly, not much went right, mainly due to my lack of experience with the tools I was using (I was learning SDL, and refreshing my memory of C++ during the competition). However, there were a few things I did right.

Using SDL

I had done a few small programs to get used to SDL, and SDL helped me hit the ground running, as it were. I had a basic chunk of code to use for the early stages of the competition, and SDL made it easy to add functionality for a variety of other things. If I hadn’t used SDL for the competition, I would have never gotten off the ground.

Getting an artist

This was both good and bad. Mostly good, however, since my own art abilities would not have produced much in the way of graphics in the time allowed. The downside of this is discussed later.

Finishing the Game

Even though the end result was plagued by bugs, and a pretty boring minute or two that it takes to beat the game, there is, in fact, a game there. The goal is get 50 rabbits, and it’s possible to achieve this goal. It’s hard to lose, though, outside of the game crashing prior to getting up to 50 rabbits. However, there is a game there, and that’s enough to be proud of.

What Went Wrong

Plenty of things went wrong, from not really knowing what I was doing, to figuring out how to make the game an actual game about a week before the end of the competition. The end result was a buggy, un-fun mess, even though I learned a lot from what I did, and didn’t do.

Learning While Programming

This was my biggest problem, even though it was the main thing I gained from the competition. I spent much of the time learning how to do this or that, and I ran out of time for any sort of actual game design. I was relearning bits of C++ such as standard library data structures, and learning new things like SDL, and pathfinding. The combination of all of the above lead to me really getting in over my head as far as some things were concerned, and I eventually ran out of time. This lead to the bugs in the game, as well as code that is terrible, to say the least.

Getting an outside artist

Admittedly, this is also a good thing, given that the ‘art’ I had made previously was about as good as standard Atari graphics. The only downside was a lack of communication, on my part as far as what formats I needed the graphics to be, and exactly how much I needed. I ended up with graphics that I couldn’t use in the time left, given that I hadn’t programmed the engine (as it were) to accept graphics in that format.

End Result

The biggest element gained from everything is that I know that, given a deadline and a reasonable desire to finish, I can pull through and finish a project. I also learned a lot about what goes into putting together a game, and have taken that knowledge into future projects. From this, I hope to pull off something for this years’ Ludum Dare, and finish a project that, if nothing else, is more stable than Rabbit Tycoon. Barring that, I hope to get enough experience and drive to finish off another of the projects that I’ve left on the wayside.