It's been a few days since the comp started and at first I wasn't doing anything, until tonight that is. So far I've only got the basics down for a First Person engine. It's going to be pretty basic in it's functionality. There is no jumping or any fancy maneuvers planned. The project is going to be some what of an experiment. I'm attempting to make the first ever pure horror game. Not an action, survival or puzzle hybrid, just a pure horror game. What does that mean? What will the game play be like?
Well I have a ton of ideas i've been collecting over the past 2 months, I was thinking about this project. The purpose of the project is to create a sense of fear within the player and to build a world of fright, darkness and pure evil. The player's objective will be to progress through the story. There may be some very minor puzzle elements just to add some flavor to the game play, as well as a small amount of survival elements, although there won't be any combat at all. It's probably closer to a horror-adventure game (with psychological elements). You will pick up objects and items and try to use them together or at certain locations to progress through the game using your wits.The story will surround a young hiker who gets lost in the woods, as night falls and supplies run low he must find shelter until morning. The game will take the player through dark forests, abandoned cabins and possibly more. The player will uncover a very sinister presence in these woods and will learn of it's dreadful history.The game is using all real textures (from free texture sources) and will include many documents in the game which also use real images and tell of the history of the location. Here is a screenshot of an abandoned cabin.
This was made in only a few hours so there's still a lot more detail to add (like a roof).The map making process is pretty much the same system i have for Termination. It doesn't allow for room on top of rooms so there will be short transitions when going up or down steps. Also true story: I started this project in GM:Studio but Studio was completely breaking the 3D drawing. The textures were completely wrong and didn't repeat right at all. I used the same exact code in 8.1 and it works perfect. I'm growing to really dislike Studio as I try to use it.Well that's all for now. I'll try to post a few logs about this project as i go along. I won't reveal to much but a few shots and bits of information won't hurt. I'm going to be trying a lot of bold things here and some of them i might share here first to get some feedback on.
That's looking really great; will look forward trying this out.
But… but… that wall texture is horrible. It looks like a texture for a wooden crate and the fact that it repeats 8 times vertically doesn't help. In fact, the door texture looks out of place, too (something out of a palace?).
Add to that the size (twice as tall as the trees) and it ends up looking like a generic Doom storehouse, not a, you know, abandoned cabin in the woods.That aside, it all sounds interesting (though I'm also kinda curious how you'll convey getting lost in the woods without either tree-textured wall mazes or giant open areas littered with occasional trees).@Cesque: yeah i'm still trying to find the right textures to use for all this. i want an old abandoned look, something that is completely decayed, the wall texture here is a bit too fresh so I'll keep looking for more textures and change them when i can. It's pretty easy to change the textures too, i can just add a new texture and than edit a few global variables. each room has it's own set of global textures so I can change things quickly.
as for the forest, it's not going to be a major part of the game play, you'll pretty much just walk through it to get to the next area. my reason being that it's pretty difficult to build a forest with billboards or other simple 3D shapes as well as creating a good amount of variety in the scenery and even than there wouldn't be much to do there. I want to focus more on indoor areas. The game is going to be very short, 30~60 minutes at most. i wanna keep it short so i can polish it more instead of having a longer sloppier game.thanks for the feedback. next time i post it'll look much better after a few days work. oh! this cabin really needs a porch, that'll add a lot of depth to the front door :DEDIT: also those aren't trees in the snapshot, those are bushes. the trees are 2 times taller :PThis looks pretty slick. I think making a game that truly gives somebody a sense of dread is one of the most difficult things to do.