next »

[zamp]

I don't think I like any of those names, they are all quite generic and/or are associated with major movies/stories (fyi: The Host is the best. movie. ever.) Mind dump:
*snip*

"The plague that ate my face"
I doubt any of what you suggested fit the overall über serious feel of the game. Keep them coming though. I've run out of ideas.

[zamp]

I wasn't happy with how the game ran. FPS less than 30 and it felt choppy every once in a while. That meant I needed more optimization!
After discussing about it with a friend he suggested I might be interested in adding a quad tree into the entity management so I could get faster collision, rendering, updates etc.
I won't bore you with the programming itself since you can read about it via google.
Here's the prototype I wrote and then implemented into the game.

Here's two screenshots. Before and after shots:




You can clearly see the speed gain in the second screenshot.
Entity updates don't update unnecessary objects (20 doors vs. 7 doors for instance)
Also events only update if they're nearby. Scripts that events run still spawn a "thread" that runs on the background just as they used to.
You might notice that raycollision only takes about half the time than it used to.
I had to drop the secondary soft shadows out from the update and render loops but might add them back in once flash concurrency is available. At that point I'll probably offload some other tasks onto a worker thread. (Fully dynamic bump mapped lights, anyone?)

[zamp]

Here's a little something
http://youtu.be/9V1faW7FUAg

[eigenbom]

You've got the atmosphere down for sure. Game reminds me of Alien Breed.

More titles:
Night of the Fungoids
Alien Pie
Dead Space 3
The Hull
Virus Shooty BangBang

[zamp]

I've been struggling with writing for a couple months and never really got the storyline down in a way I liked but yesterday was a special day! I wrote the whole storyline from beginning to end in about 20 minutes. I had made some progress before but I ended up writing a piece into the game that lead to a situation that I couldn't find a way out of so I ended up scrapping that part altogether and wrote a new improved version of the story. It still pretty much has the same key scenes that I had been idealizing all the way back when I first started this project (wow, over 3 years now).
There are some gaps in the story still where I just wrote "David goes there" and note about some funky stuff that might happen in between. Funky might not be the best word to describe these situations... completely fucked up sounds a lot better.
I'm still finding it hard to design levels in a way that they feel real. Maybe I should visit a real laboratory (preferably under ground one) to see how they operate. The ideas and themes I revolve around are purely from fiction. Although I've looked up a bunch of images from google to get the overall look of a place.
The major theme of the game is now set in stone. Silent Hill 1 mixed with lovely gene modified lab animals.

Here's a screenshot of the horror world that the player "enters" from time to time. (Click image to open it)

[zamp]

Tiny update. I've added item glow to items so they're easier to spot if they're in a dark room. You might also notice the glow that the player has. This was added to make the game a bit less disorientating.

The effect isn't actually this bright. I had to brighten the image to counter the contrast given by the white background of the forum

Also fixed a lightmap cache glitch which lead to NPCs running a quite expensive function every frame.

Also check out the new NPC graphic for Bastards!
Instead of going for the rat like creature I went with this squid thing. I still need to make the tentacles move in a more tentaclier fashion. They will also leave a dark smudge trail behind them.
Even though these creatures look like they might be slow they're incredibly agile. They don't have any eyes but the spongy tissue on their uhh.. cranium is so thin that they're very light sensitive and prefer to stay in the dark. They also have a keen sense of telling if you're looking at them and they tend to only attack you from behind. Their attack is pathetic but it feels so icky that you lose your sanity very fast.

[DustyDrake]

The effect isn't actually this bright. I had to brighten the image to counter the contrast given by the white background of the forum

I see a black box with lighter smudges.
Perhaps you're working on too high-contrast monitor?

[zamp]

I see a black box with lighter smudges.
Perhaps you're working on too high-contrast monitor?

There I pumped the brightness up a notch. It's still as dark as it is in game but that's by design. You're not supposed to be able to see in the dark. You can also view the screenshots on imgur.

[zamp]

A demo! A demo! A demo!
I've pre-released this demo version only for you peeps at tigsource. Have fun and please give feedback.
Cheers
(Game's name will now stick. I might change the title (a battle for sanity) but I doubt I'll think of a better one.)

GET DEMO
You might also need this
Get AIR

[kitheif]

Woo! Demo!
I like it a lot! Especially the lighting and sound

The only problem I had was with the emergency notes, I had no clue how to exit it xD (Backspaced eventually)
And the layer above the player with the lights and pipes, it feels like there should be a parallax giving some more depth..
Also, after going down stairs and finishing everything down there, I went back upstairs and all the old events repeated. (Like the gasp when you see a corpse)

Anyways, great demo, very cool!

[zamp]

Woo! Demo!
I like it a lot! Especially the lighting and sound

The only problem I had was with the emergency notes, I had no clue how to exit it xD (Backspaced eventually)
And the layer above the player with the lights and pipes, it feels like there should be a parallax giving some more depth..
Also, after going down stairs and finishing everything down there, I went back upstairs and all the old events repeated. (Like the gasp when you see a corpse)

Anyways, great demo, very cool!

Thanks for the feedback.
Any key ftw
I'll try adding parallax mapping to the top layer.  Also I'll make sure the events don't fire again if you go back upstairs.

[kitheif]

I guess I didn't think of that because of the beautiful 3d journal effect!
Keep at it, I'm looking forward to future builds :D

[IndieGamesDig]

Very scary atmosphere, I jumped at a few parts. The game looks to already be succeeding in the creepiness department. Here's some criticism now...hope it's not too much.

I felt like there was insufficient direction regarding progress, I mean it seems like the game requires you to check every single room in order to acquire the items needed to progress, which is alittle too methodical for my taste. I remember skipping a room or two at the beginning of the game, and after getting stuck later in the game, I had to basically backtrack to the beginning to make sure i didn't miss some critical item there. I actually ended up doing alot of back tracking since I wasn't 100% on some of the game mechanics, like double clicking items in you inventory and pressing red and green buttons, and the result was alot of tedious wandering to already-checked areas.

The buttons on the coroner's computer didn't seem to work for me on my first playthrough, so I had to exit the game when I got on it. Then when i replayed the game, the same thing happened when I got the generator running and used the computer by the radio; no button, including backspace and escape, could get me out of the computer screen, so I had to quit again. This might just be my system or something, who knows.

The direction the player character faces is alittle awkward at times. When the mouse is above the character, and you're pressing right or left, for instance, it's weird to see his body facing a diagonal direction while he's moving perfectly straight...this isn't a big deal of course, but since alot of horror game's effectiveness can stem from realism (IMO), videogamieness (like having a guy walk in a direction he's not pointed in) can sometimes take me out of the game alittle and break the immersion and visceral creepiness that you've crafted...but Lone Survivor was very videogamey and that was awesome, so feel free to ignore this.

Also, if there's anyway to let people play the demo without Adobe Air, you'd probably get a few more plays and more feedback, it's just one more thing people have to download and have lingering on their systems.

That's all, you're definitely on the right track, and the game shows great potential--I hope I didn't throw too much negativity at you. Good luck with development.

[zamp]

Very scary atmosphere, I jumped at a few parts. The game looks to already be succeeding in the creepiness department. Here's some criticism now...hope it's not too much.

All criticism is good

I felt like there was insufficient direction regarding progress, I mean it seems like the game requires you to check every single room in order to acquire the items needed to progress, which is alittle too methodical for my taste. I remember skipping a room or two at the beginning of the game, and after getting stuck later in the game, I had to basically backtrack to the beginning to make sure i didn't miss some critical item there. I actually ended up doing alot of back tracking since I wasn't 100% on some of the game mechanics, like double clicking items in you inventory and pressing red and green buttons, and the result was alot of tedious wandering to already-checked areas.

I'll do some redesigning of levels to streamline gameplay. About the game mechanics themselves.. I trust that you are smart enough to figure stuff out yourself. All of the storyline critical items will be easy to find

The buttons on the coroner's computer didn't seem to work for me on my first playthrough, so I had to exit the game when I got on it. Then when i replayed the game, the same thing happened when I got the generator running and used the computer by the radio; no button, including backspace and escape, could get me out of the computer screen, so I had to quit again. This might just be my system or something, who knows.

That's a bug that I introduced somehow into the game. I thought I took care of it but apparently not. I'll look into this.

The direction the player character faces is alittle awkward at times. When the mouse is above the character, and you're pressing right or left, for instance, it's weird to see his body facing a diagonal direction while he's moving perfectly straight...this isn't a big deal of course, but since alot of horror game's effectiveness can stem from realism (IMO), videogamieness (like having a guy walk in a direction he's not pointed in) can sometimes take me out of the game alittle and break the immersion and visceral creepiness that you've crafted...but Lone Survivor was very videogamey and that was awesome, so feel free to ignore this.

You can change your controls in the options (only accessible in main menu for now). Click the relative/direct movement button to change between them. Someone once suggested that I'll make an option in game where you get to try both and then choose which you want. Maybe I'll add that.

Also, if there's anyway to let people play the demo without Adobe Air, you'd probably get a few more plays and more feedback, it's just one more thing people have to download and have lingering on their systems.

I don't think I can go back to just flash anymore since I'm using a lot of air functions. People are going to need to have AIR linger on their computers
Also when I use AIR I can easily make a mobile port of the game.

That's all, you're definitely on the right track, and the game shows great potential--I hope I didn't throw too much negativity at you. Good luck with development.

Thanks for the feedback

I guess I didn't think of that because of the beautiful 3d journal effect!
Keep at it, I'm looking forward to future builds :D

On another note. If you want to become a game tester send me an email at [email protected]

[zamp]

Here's a second rc of the demo.
Edit: bollocks.. forgot some map events in the old place. Now you can't proceed further

• Changed the maintenance level's elevator location to where the lights go out.
• Added a return cursor to the notes
• Possibly fixed the issue with not being able to click dialog options
• Fixed mousetrigger retrigger bug after map change
• Added parallax to on top layer