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Copy Clerk  Posts: 79 Joined: 2 Sep 2008     | |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 3002 Joined: 8 May 2008     | Ability to move and shoot. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1124 Joined: 17 Jun 2008     | Make sure if you're going for horror, go for psychological scares more. Eternal Darkness = Scary Also make sure it your character can't breeze right through enemies like they were just playing Gears. Make them survive, not just point and shoot with glee. |
Copy Clerk Posts: 79 Joined: 2 Sep 2008 | We already trying to make this game as realistic as possible not to mention brutal. |
Infamous Scribbler  Posts: 632 Joined: 15 Jun 2008   | Survival Horror eh? Hm... Make your characters rather fragile. No respawning health bars, and medkits take time to restore health, not just instantly give you a chunk of health. Put the player into somewhat comprimising situations. Like having to kill zombie children. That really fucks with you. Especially if afterward you find out you were hallucinating and you really just slaughtered a day care. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1463 Joined: 2 Jan 2008     | Don't litter the game with ammo. Force the player to conserve their bullets and take careful shots. While you're at it, include a mechanic that causes the character's gun to jam every once in a while. |
Infamous Scribbler  Posts: 559 Joined: 26 May 2008 |
Wow...you're sick. I feel I have no choice but to firebomb your house. On topic... Make it super scary. If you're going for a survival/horror theme, you have to keep ammo scarce (as to not turn it into an FPS), maybe have flickering lights and dim corridors, and make enemies pop out at you from around corner. Overall, keep the players on their toes, and never let up on the spooks. |
Copy Clerk Posts: 79 Joined: 2 Sep 2008 | We were thinking of inventing weapons for about 4 months now and its finally agreed apon. Just imagine an unlimited invetory space, making useful tools mcguyver style, and kicking infected asses all day... |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1750 Joined: 13 Feb 2008    |
Don't have guns, or make them really rare and have little ammo. Nothing is scary when you can shoot it. If you include combat, either go Condemned style and make it very visceral and in-your-face, or go survival, and make barrier creation, ammo scavenging , etc. Don't try to find a balance. It doesn't work well. Resident Evil isn't scary, as Shivari said, and that's because you can shoot everything that moves. Don't give the main character military training. Don't go for the jump-scares. Don't have things come out of closets or from off camera. Have the environments be the thing that gets to the player. Make it eerie, but not obnoxiously scary-looking. A long, dark hallway is a lot scarier when nothing comes out to kill you. When nothing happens, the player starts looking for things to jump out. Their mind starts searching for a scary beast, and there is none. They become paranoid and jumpy. Anyways, I am rambling. Serious about that military training though. Don't do it. |
Paperboy  Posts: 41 Joined: 4 Sep 2008   | have it to where zombies or what ever enemy type can hit your gun or melee edit: |
Anonymous Source  Posts: 2 Joined: 5 Sep 2008   | Have a creature that looks like a lamp or something but then goes out. Afterwords it is invisible (maybe noisy or somewhat easy to hit) and then when it attacks you it just paralyzes you and plays the death animation BACKWARDS. I really do hope that hasn't been done before. Oh, and here's another idea. Have the classic "open door and find monster inside" thing, except, have there be just a small closet with no monster inside and then when you turn around there it is, probably somewhere in the middle of it's attack. Also having breakable lights would be good, as you could accidentally make the game so much harder. Adn the gun jamming idea + the orphanage idea are both sick/sweet. |
Press Junketeer  Posts: 490 Joined: 15 Aug 2008  | have your character slowly bleed to death without bandages... |
Copy Clerk Posts: 79 Joined: 2 Sep 2008 | we have a few really messed up enemys already decided on, rib pool: a puddle of water with ribs sticking out of it that if stepped on creates a cage if you cant break out in time it pulls you under and you drown. Anything: A creature that is a cross between a blob and a crab that changes its body to the closest object. Banshee: An invisible super infected that has brutal attacks and the only way to find it is by using the sound vision on your goggles to see its shrieks. Sound vision: the screen turns blue and any noise is shown by radiating white lines. PLUS many many more... |
Copy Clerk Posts: 79 Joined: 2 Sep 2008 | Instead of most other games like this that focus more on guns and shooting, I want this game to be focused more on your flashlight and knife. The knife allows for more close combat and more brutal battles... |
Beat Writer  Posts: 134 Joined: 4 Sep 2008  | If I may ask. What are you using to develop this game? Just curious |
Press Junketeer Posts: 490 Joined: 15 Aug 2008 | Go the Condemned route if you want brutal Melee.. |
Copy Clerk Posts: 79 Joined: 2 Sep 2008 | we havent made it far enough to start making the game yet because money is also a problem... We are looking for an afforable program to use... If you could suggest one it would be great help. We are right now finishing writing the story. We are now just making weapons, levels , enemies, And charicter designs... We are hoping to start actually making the game soon... as soon as we get a program to run it... |
Paperboy Posts: 41 Joined: 4 Sep 2008 | if you're feelin lucky you could try to maybe pitch your game idea to a video game company |
Copy Clerk  Posts: 112 Joined: 24 Jul 2008 | Sounds like it could be awesome. One thing I want to see is scary-ass environments. Maybe like what meatloaf said, make it so you're expecting things to pop out but nothing does. But make sure the player's expecting something, like have rattling doors and foot steps, then have nothing happen. |
Gone Gonzo Posts: 1463 Joined: 2 Jan 2008 |
I don't think it works like that. If anyone with a video game idea could just waltz into a "video game company" and pitch, bedroom "developers" would be lined up for miles every day. I'm assuming they already know what they're going to "design the game with". |
Beat Writer Posts: 222 Joined: 12 Aug 2008  | I would just like to add you should probably get a really good composer if you don't already have one. Its all good and well haveing a scary darkly lit corridor but without a good music score it just wont have the same effect. Im sure everyones heard that violin strings being plucked thing that thriller/horror movies use now. |
Beat Writer  Posts: 142 Joined: 15 Jul 2008 | I've always had this idea for a really fucking sweet moment in a survival horror. You're in a fairly safe seeming room, maybe you've been there a few times (could be a save point or whatever) and somehow about six billion [insert scary bad guy]s manage to find you. The lights go out. Pitch black, like you can see NOTHING. The ONLY source of light is the muzzle flash from your gun for which you have very little ammo. Escape. Alive. I kind of feel like I'm giving away a million dollar idea here though so maybe this scene should occur in a bakery or something. :-P |
Muckraker  Posts: 308 Joined: 20 Mar 2008 | Make sure that nothing dies instantly. Let infected thrash around and move for a few seconds after they have absorbed 100% damage. NOTE: this does not apply if you have done something that garuntees instant death, such as decapitation. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 2245 Joined: 3 Apr 2008    | Depends on the character really for weaponry but I would recommend a chainsaw in one level (or a bonus fun level) |
Infamous Scribbler  Posts: 584 Joined: 10 Apr 2008 | Long, and minimalist -- over dialogue is good for RPGs but the more extroversion in a horror game the worse it gets. What i mean is like take away things like leon radio'ing base. Isolation and fear of the unknown are the hallmarks of a good survival game... So don't let the player know what the hell is attacking him half the time I think it would be awesome if you could find a way to not have people walking around picking up random g36s and shotguns. A good old fashioned hunting rifle found in a cobweb-covered statue's hands would be great, single shot reload but if fires through two enemies... I think that if anyone is gonna make truly successful indy game they need to shun the more mainstream aspects like chainsaws and zombies. I think the scariest thing would be a group of insane but nonetheless lucid human beings toying with you in a giant old mansion - set in the 1920s. Or similarly a group doing that to you set in an old colony in jamaica, with voodoo things thrown in. Oh juicy! those games would ROCK
very very good point. And don't make the story up on your own lol send a pitch to terry pratchet or perhaps a more horror-oriented writer |
Copy Clerk  Posts: 111 Joined: 5 Sep 2008 |
How about creatures that move faster when it's dark? Combined with the flickering lights, they can really just jump out at you. |
Anonymous Source Posts: 7 Joined: 8 Aug 2008 | free ware game engine called "neo axis" all our 2nd year game students are using it to do thier majour project game mods, quite good, supports normal maps, real time lighting, multi sub textures, physics, quite flexible code modification, easy to import mesh and texture assets. decent AI and pathfinding. Supports first person, 3rd, side scroller and rts camera modes. decent forum community/support/info and tutorials available. If you want to make money a full commercial license is around $100-200 i think. (entirely written by 1 savant genius that dosnt like money? hehehe IMO Horror survivor genera: |
Press Junketeer  Posts: 395 Joined: 4 Sep 2008 | How about enemies that you can *only* see when it's dark, and then not very well. Like, if you go with the light/darl, breakable lights mechanic, force the player to cut out the lights in order to see these weird, dim, shuffling forms, and then in later levels have these encounters followed up by regular enemies. Also, include some sort of defence level. I love zombie defence. Give the player some sort of relaistic motivation, like trying to reach a safe house or safe spot. Even if you then take away this place that s/he's been trying to reach the whole game once you get there. Towards the beginning of the game, have Max Payne style tv's scattered about, givign you updates and information as to how the zombie menace is affecting the rest of the world, but as the fighting gets more intense for you, make it so for the rest of the world, untill eventually all outside contact is shut off, and you don't know what's happening. Well, there's a mix of ideas there, for a more sort of 'haunted area' type game to the global Z-Day Apocalypse. Feel free the use any. But I want a creative consultant credit. |
Beat Writer  Posts: 198 Joined: 12 Dec 2007 | Visual 3d.net is in it's beta stage. It's quite a nice visually based 3d engine. It's got a basic AI creation tool where you just enter the values you want and click create. Might be worth a look. Alternatively there's always Torque Game Engine or TGE Advanced. Conitec's 3D Game Studio A7 has a few versions, the free one doesn't have any advanced shaders though. Of course for modelling there's Blender which is free but quite complicated. Silo looks like a nice polygonal modelling package. Zbrush isn't ideal for base mesh modelling is really good for adding high level detail to your mesh as a normal map. I've been trying to make a few games and it takes so much dedication, seriously! Make sure you have planned your game before you start creating assets etc, it will speed up the whole process so much. |
Muckraker  Posts: 309 Joined: 2 Jul 2008 | Ok. Here's a free idea: Separate the point of view from the player's control of the character. The game is set 'somewhere' which has some moving and some static (and some half-broken) Closed-Circuit Television Cameras in rooms. You divide the screen into nine, each of which is cycling through a pattern of TV feeds without your control. You have four characters which you switch between by pressing the face buttons. Therefore, you can only use the analog sticks to change their compass heading and speed of movement. So, if you move Up on the Left Stick the character under your control faces North, but you have to move the Right Stick Up to get them to walk/run in that direction. Moving the Right Stick Down will get them to retreat, Left will have them strafe left. However, if the Left Stick is pushed to the Right your character now faces East and all the mappings of the Right Stick rotate in harmony with it, so you now have to move the Right Stick Right to walk/run 'forward', Left to retreat and Up to strafe to the character's Left. The Left Trigger does crouching (and if it is an analogue control it will make use of this as an incremental posture rather than a 'switch'). As aiming a weapon from a 3rd person point of view is troublesome (and given that you probably would have restricted ammunition in order to heighten tension) I'd suggest you look at Condemned on the 360 to see what you can do with 'found objects' in the environment that wear down and break with use. If you do insist on having a gun it would be better if it had a laser scope that put a line 'out' to a spot on the enemy, then implement real-time target specific damage - i.e. shoot an armored opponent in their wrist to force them to drop a club. This would probably require entering an aim mode when you held the Left Bumper (which would stop the Right Stick from moving you and make it into a character-focused light-gun-like 'look' stick. The Right Bumper would be have to be 'Reload' as the face buttons are used. So, with that explanation out of the way... the gameplay would centre on you guiding your four friends out of 'somewhere hazardous' like a zombie infested lab against a deadline as the zombies first went after them and then figured out where you were hiding and regrouped 'en masse' to break into the security room that you had barricaded yourself in. Your only hope would be to get your friends to the armory and then direct them back for your rescue before the door behind you got beaten in by the horde. So, the sound effects would pertain only to you (and your friends when they returned with weapons to free you) and the early part of the game would be played in eerie silence as there would be no audio to accompany the CCTV. It would be a puzzle to coordinate the changing video feeds with your friends movements (in teams, or split up - it would be your choice), but so that it wasn't close-to-impossible-to-play there would be regular overlap between the cameras from different angles/distances. As far as I know this is completely original, but you are welcome to use it without further explicit permission or credit. |
Muckraker  Posts: 306 Joined: 29 Feb 2008   |
But its true that would fuck with your mind quite a bit. |
Muckraker  Posts: 270 Joined: 17 Jun 2008 | Make a Cthulhu game! Pleeease!! |
Beat Writer  Posts: 160 Joined: 29 Apr 2008 |
Torque is probably the lowest cost professional game engine you can buy. There is also Game Maker which is not as professional but easier. Alternatly there is always the make your own engine with C++, C#, or (god help you) BASIC. Before you get too deep into design make sure you know what your technical limitations are. Will this be 2d or 3d? How will the user interface with the game? What will the game play screen look like? You should ask your self these questions before getting too deep into the ingame scenarios. You may find some other the things you want to do are impossible or too costly. |
Copy Clerk  Posts: 58 Joined: 27 May 2008 | |
Me and my friends are starting up a small game company and we are in the middle of making a horror/survival game. I would like to hear what everyone would like to see in such a game.