I can't figure out what is wrong with this. I'm using that thingy- the

while(speed_counter > 0){
  //do stuff
  speed_counter--;
}

But it is going insanely fast!

There is also
volatile long speed_counter = 0;
in a header file.

There is lots of drawing but that code is fine. For some reason it flies through it, determines you died, and brings up the death screen. What is wrong with this code?

the first possible bug that comes to my mind:
Did you forget to initialize speed_counter with 0 ...?
If you wrote something like this
volatile int speed_counter;
it might be initialized with a value of 223499... so your program would do thousands of loops as fast as it can... dunno, maybe

No, its volatile long speed_counter = 0;

My guess is that it's because everything's running at 60 BPS, and you don't have a pausing or slowdown coded in the sections that need it.

You're raising, moving and animating zombies at 60 times per second. I would have thought animation of 60 times per second is too much. 8-10 frames a sec might suit a little better. You can achieve this by using a counter in the animation method.

One way to determine whether this is the problem is to temporarily change the BPS_TO_TIMER(60) to BPS_TO_TIMER(6).

All changing that does is change te pause before it ends. It appears as though the while(...){...} statement is having a large problem.

Err, yes, silly me - I should have realised .

What happens if you try the following:

Add a variable (int delay) to your zombie class, and initialise it to 10 for every zombie. Then update the section of code that draws the zombies.

      /*=draw the zombies, check 4 hits=====*/
      for(int i = 0; i < 250; i++){
        if(horde<i>.alive){
          if (!(--horde<i>.delay)){
            horde<i>.y += horde<i>.fall_speed;
            horde<i>.frame++;
            if(horde<i>.frame > 8)
              horde<i>.frame = 1;
            horde<i>.delay = 10;
          }
        }
      }

If this helps the animation, try the something similar for the 'raise me some zombies' section.

BTW, I'm having a wild guess at what the problem is that you're experiencing. This may not solve it at all. But, it's worth a crack.

To everyone who helped: my most profuse thanks.
It works! Well, except for a r...thats unrelated. Thanks.

This is your first (and maybe biggest) problem.

Hmm...

• Whitespace is like a younger child. You seem to be neglecting it

• Timing code and all other code simply do not get along. You should separate them before they cause more bar fights.

• Tierney operators are like politics, you must careful what you let them do. See code below.

(lvl < 5)?(prog += (10-lvl)):(prog++);

// I believe most programmers would agree this version is cleaner:

prog += (lvl < 5) ? (10 - lvl) : 1;

In short: Maybe you should decide a few code distribution systems you enjoy using and explore them more thoroughly.