Coding Zombie Runner with Python
Calvin Robinson creates a custom toolbox for quickly manipulating a custom-built environment, complete with graphical user interface.
PYGAME
Credit: https://raytomely.itch.io/run-and-gun
OUR EXPERT
Calvin Robinson is a former assistant principal and computer science teacher. He has a degree in computer games design and programming.
QUICK TIP
We can alter the text of our game in dialog.py – we can go into much deeper detail than just changing the font face, too. Size (down to height and width), background colour, border colour, text position, and frame can all be adjusted.
For the latest instalment in this series of retro game development in Python, we’re going to create a zombie run ‘n’ gun game!
The zombie apocalypse genre has been prevalent in media for some time. Resident Evil, Left 4 Dead and The Last Of Us are all incredibly successful video games in the genre. Paired with a run ‘n’ gun action video game, itself a sub-genre of the shoot ‘em up, the retro zombie runner features a player character running around a two-dimensional game world, avoiding contact with and shooting at enemy zombies for as long as possible in order to score points.
Traditional shooters of this type in the 1970s would have a fixed player character and a game world that would move around them. In the 1980s we saw what’s known as ‘tube shooters’ with a single axis of directional movement for the player character. By the 1990s we began to see the introduction of rail shooters, which limited the player character’s movement around the screen to a specific route.
Vertical and horizontal shooters and isometrically scrolling shooters became prominent in the early 1980s, but it’s the multi-directional shooter that we’re interested in. We’re going to create a game world which the player can explore at will, killing enemy zombies along the way. This won’t be anything fancy – it’ll still be a vintage two dimensional world– but it’ll be very playable by modern standards.