'Dementia' Uni Project/ WIP maybe

[Destroyerhive]

Hi guys,
great looking at all of your work, you're all amazing!

I thought i might share my project. I am currently around 5 weeks away from finishing my games design degree and my major project was a continuation of a 2nd year project i did. In the 2nd year i looked at the horror genre of games and where its influences lay, it's history and development and how it has gone from survival horror to a more action based horror to appeal to the wider consumer audience.

The project i have done this year has been a continuation of this research and using it as a basis to create a horror game which focusses more on survival and less on fighting hordes of enemies. To this end i have done alot of research in to music and ambience in a game environment. The video below shows my final level (missing a few sections and rooms).

Its around 3months of actual practical work based on a year and half of research and development of ideas. I have created everything within it other than a few pipes along the ceilings. Nothing is incredibly high detail or high poly as i had to fit in as much as i can into a few months on my own while also working on 3 other projects. I have created all the sound, meshes, textures, kismets and matinees, and alot of it was picked as the best of the ideas from the sketchbook so i actually have books full of other ideas.

I'm currently considering whether to carry on working on the concept. I will be at uni for another two years doing a masters in games design so i could work into it alot more.


What i'd really appreciate is other people's constructive ideas and thoughts on it. If people are interested i can post the basic story outline but as far as the demo level goes, you wake up in an asylum, your daughter is missing, and you have to find her.

thanks guys, hope you like it!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IQctlYxC4o

[tubby]

That is pretty nice, that first flash on the screen made me jump a bit :}

[Max Power]

Looks neat. Very Penumbra.

A few things to be careful of:

Flashing the face on the screen is a cheap scare. This is a game not an internet prank video, and holds no weight the second time. If you wish put an instant scare, you need to stick with it being WITHIN the level as opposed to just a picture on the screen.

Voice acting can either make or break a game, this one is the latter. See the key word is "acting". This person sound enthusiastic, not scared or creeped out. This current presentation would be better without it because of it's current quality. Pulls the player right out of the spooky atmosphere.

Beware of Door City. It's real easy making this type of game to go heavy on doors because it's easy. Not every room needs a door. Think about other designs that aren't room to room, and having doors open/close themselves is a great way to add tension.

A lot of UDK sounds in there, so watch your wording on credits.

Kill the default hud. I know why you left it there, for putting announcements on the screen, but again, this kills the illusion. You'd be better off not telling the player anything.

I'd like to see you continue this project. However, since you said these were your best ideas, and they are all standard surivival horror basic elements, so maybe not.

[Destroyerhive]

i fully agree on the voice acting, my main actress backed out late on in development and so i ended up roping someone into do it, only reason it was included was because the lecturor made such a big deal about wanting it to be a womans voice. i completely want to redo all voice acting. Also the same sound for the doors doesnt help, that got noticed early in development but there wasnt time later on to change it around abit. My final video i hand in will actually have all the voice removed, as i said its just in there for the proof of its presence, so i can say, i did try get something in, even if it wasnt what i wanted overall.

I know the flash is a cheap scare, what i actually want is somethign akin to Fear and how they have people walk around and fade out or disintegrate. as you can see on the one wall i can now do the material transition, but i didn't have time to model characters, and rig some walk sequences for them.


Yeh i have the HUD on for the announcements, if i had the time to do the better voice acting i would love to replace it all. I only sorted the whole GFX section in the last fortnight of development but i would love to replace everything with that so if any announcements do need to happen, then i can use flash.

The Flashlight wasn't everything i wanted it to be. I had the third person fixed camera set up, akin to resident evil and silent hill, and the flashlight follows all axis in there not just left and right. I just didnt have time to model my player character, and the unreal marine would ruin immersion even more than the bad voice acting

Thanks for your thoughts, as you can see alot of it was thought about, or i didnt have the time to implement. To be honest i wish i had another 6months to just rework it all and expand. These two corridors were actually more my practice corridors, the asylum layout is actually very similar to the arkham asylum layout in the game, with outdoor areas, there would be restaruants/mess hall. Different operating areas. Theres actually a really cool concept i have for a room linked in with the story, which if implemented right would be pretty cool.
I also have 4 types of enemies, all different in aspect and i what i really want is to have this sense of needed to get away and survive. Theres no weapons, its all about avoidance and hiding from them, i'm really hoping for those kind of horror moments where your are behind a door and something is banging against it and you just hope it doesnt break through because you know you are dead if it does.

I have another two years a uni to work on games design projects, i could continue this, the thought has crossed my mind of making some kind of handheld simpler version much like silent hill origins/shattered memories on psp. I do think that when the ideas are put together as part of a story they will have more effect. What i found was that what i have created will only be played for maybe 5minutes at my degree show, hence why alot of the time i jump back to the easy and simple jump scares. I think what would really help is being in the story and the scares being linked to the story itself. But all of that needs alot more than the 3 months i got


thanks for your input, all your opinions and thoughts are really welcome

[Max Power]

Well, you've got a good attitude, and that's what's important.

Just keep plugging away at what you want to make until you're happy with it. I spent a year just tinkering with gameplay elements in UDk before going back and redoing my game from scratch using all that new knowledge.