Chapter 20: Memory Replay Potion
Chen Mo rested well for an entire night. The next morning, after washing up and finishing breakfast, he waited until his mind was at its clearest, then used the Memory Replay Potion to begin searching through the forgotten memories buried in his mind.
Plants vs. Zombies was a game from quite some time ago, and many of his memories had already become blurry. These memories contained numerous details that would directly affect the game’s quality, so Chen Mo didn’t dare to be careless.
The effect of the Memory Replay Potion took hold quickly, and Chen Mo’s thoughts slowly drifted back many years.
The first things that came to mind were the classic plant designs: the Peashooter that looked like a certain dragon mother, the Wall-nut resembling a certain tall musician, the Potato Mine with a joystick on its head, the Sunflower with its enigmatic smile, the Wall-nut with eyes as wide as light bulbs…
Then came the various zombies: the normal zombie, the Conehead zombie, the Pole Vaulting zombie, the Buckethead zombie, the Football zombie, the Dancing zombie…
And then there were the different scenes, like the classic scene, the night scene, the pool scene, and so on.
As his memories grew clearer, Chen Mo quickly grabbed his drawing tablet and sketched out the appearances of these plants and zombies in rough drafts, mainly capturing the key features and details of these classic designs.
After that, Chen Mo began recalling the entire game flow.
From the moment he first entered the game, the words spoken by Crazy Dave, to planting the first plant, defeating the first zombie, and then continuously unlocking new levels, new plants, and defeating new bosses…
As he recalled, Chen Mo recorded everything, detailing the key points of each level. For example, which level unlocked which plant, which level unlocked a special mode, and so on.
Next, he jotted down some game data.
For instance, how often the Peashooter fired a bullet, roughly how much damage boost the Torchwood provided, the approximate slow effect of the Winter Melon, how many hits different zombies could withstand against various attacks before dying…
Although these data points seemed insignificant, they would directly affect the numerical framework of the entire game. With his limited numerical design skills, Chen Mo had no choice but to use this brute-force method.
Four hours passed in the blink of an eye.
Chen Mo let out a long breath. During those four hours, his mind had been in a state of extreme concentration, and now that he relaxed, he felt utterly exhausted.
However, he couldn’t afford to slack off yet. He quickly took advantage of the lingering impressions in his mind to fill in all the data and details, afraid of missing anything.
Human memory naturally fades over time. The Memory Replay Potion only guaranteed the ability to freely search through memories for four hours. Once those four hours were up, these memories would slowly disappear again.
After another two hours of work, Chen Mo let out another long breath, collapsed into his chair, grabbed his water cup, and took a drink.
On his computer desktop, Chen Mo had opened a new design document to record the game’s details, filling it with thousands of entries. There were also numerous sketch files containing rough drafts of plants, zombies, scenes, and even the game’s UI layout style—everything was there.
He had fully utilized the Memory Replay Potion, squeezing every last bit of value out of it.
“Damn, I’m exhausted.”
Chen Mo wiped the sweat from his forehead. His mind had been under intense strain for six hours straight, and he could barely hold on anymore.
But honestly, why was he in such a mess? Because he only had one dose of the Memory Replay Potion! If he had two, he could have taken it easy—one bottle today, another tomorrow, with eight hours total to record every detail of the game without all this frantic tension.
So, Chen Mo knew deep down: he still needed to make money and then spend it on in-game purchases!
He stood up, walked around a bit, ate some food, munched on a few pieces of chocolate, brewed a cup of coffee, and after a short break, continued working.
Next came refining the design document, finalizing the details of the earlier designs, and recording them in the document. These details might seem trivial, but they actually had a huge impact on the game experience, and Chen Mo dared not overlook them.
Refining the document took Chen Mo an entire week.
A week later, the entire game document was basically finalized, with all details polished. The foundational rules, interface layout, types of plants and zombies, and all other settings were complete.
After that, Chen Mo input all these rules into the editor. The editor would automatically generate a game project based on the rules, and from then on, Chen Mo could directly modify the project.
Generating the project would take about one to three days—the more rules, the longer it took.
During this time, Chen Mo planned to finalize the game’s numerical system.
The basic attributes of plants included: attack power, health points, range, attack interval, attack area, preparation time (how long after placement before it becomes active), cooldown time (time before it can be placed again), cost, and damage points (mainly for broken effects), among others.
For every plant and zombie, Chen Mo had to list all their attributes and continuously verify them.
The game data he had recorded earlier was a huge help. The numerical details between different plants and zombies could cross-verify each other, making the entire numerical design process twice as efficient.
In two days, the entire numerical system was finalized. Since Chen Mo had a wealth of numerical details as references, this system should be very close to the original version from his past life. Even if there were deviations, they wouldn’t be significant.
Next came verification and constant fine-tuning.
During this time, the Illusion World Editor had already generated the game project. Chen Mo temporarily named the project “PVZ.” The project name was just a code; the real name would be decided when the game was officially released.
Opening the project, Chen Mo checked the various rules and mechanisms. There weren’t many issues. A few minor rule errors and logic gaps were quickly patched up.
After that, Chen Mo imported all the numerical settings and matched the corresponding art resources for each zombie and plant. This created a simple, runnable game demo.
At this point, the project had no tutorial and no levels.
Chen Mo created a new scene, tried planting a Peashooter, and placed a normal zombie on the opposite side.
“Bang, bang, bang…”
Under the Peashooter’s continuous attacks, the zombie fell.
The pacing was acceptable. Chen Mo tested other zombies and plants, and aside from a few numerical values that felt off and needed minor adjustments, everything else was fine.
Next, Chen Mo started working on the interface and setting up the levels.
Setting up levels was also a technical task. The entire level progression had to steadily increase in difficulty, making players feel the challenge without ramping up too fast and getting stuck.
Chen Mo had already recorded a large number of level details—roughly how many zombies each level spawned, which level unlocked which new plant, and so on—so there weren’t many issues.
Over five days, Chen Mo completed all the interfaces and the main level progression, along with the tutorial. As a result, the adventure mode of Plants vs. Zombies was essentially fully recreated by Chen Mo.
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