More quick sketches

Some more quick sketches.

Drawings for new modular building set

After a not so successful first attempt at modular building a building, I decided to attempt to plan things out, excuse the Odeon paper I sketched it out on, it was all that was within reach.

3D Motive Modular Building

Instead of finishing off the building it would be a lot better to build Warley with a modular set. To do this I paid for and downloaded a tutorial on it form 3D Motive.

http://www.3dmotive.com/product-modular-building-udk

This is so I know that I am doing everything the right way. It will be a lot more efficient for the engine.

Research for Pauls Operating theatre :)

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=76841&highlight=decaLS&page=2

Warley Sketch up update

A few modifications for reference on the sketch up model.

Sales panflet for mental hospital supplies.

What a find. A sales panflet showing warious restraints used during the 70's for adults children and babies.

1970's gurney reference

I have come across this image of a gurney from the 70's. Good wisual reference.

First Hand Information

I have found two people online that both work in the mental health profession. One of them is a sichiatris for the police and the other works on a ward in a mental hospital.

They have both offered their help in giving us research on the way mental hospitals look, feel and sound and are giving me an insight into the types of mental illness that will help push our game to a good level of detail when it comes to mental illness.

This is what I was given by the first of these people and she wishes to remain annonymus she calls herself "Sexyashell"

"let’s start with some depts. there are administrations, I.E. admitting, case managers, billing and coding. Then there is security, then there are wards and the wards are levels of severity. Level 1 is people that can manage their mental illness with medications and they will have a short stay. level 2 are people that have a slightly more severe mental illness and will require a longer stay but could manage their illness with medications but will probably be admitted back into the hospital several times throughout their lives. Level 3 have a more aggressive and more serious form of mental illness. They will probably require a long hospital stay and there may even be a chance that they will never get out because they are not safe for themselves or for the public. They are on heavy kinds and large doses of medications but it only helps a little bit. Then there are level 4, the criminally insane. These people will never get out they are a danger to themselves and to others. They will cause serious harm to people around them; they are on heavy meds, like lithium. They are watched by security, hospital staff at all times if they are not locked in their rooms. There mental illness has caused them to be in a prison in their own head.
Then there is the nurses, doctors, and psychiatric techs and other psych staff. These people all have direct contact with the patients.

The outside of a state mental hospital will be close to looking like a prison. It will have fences and maybe even bob-wire fences around the level 3 and level 4 wards. It may even have a paediatric mental health ward. i hope this helps some if you have any questions please let me know.
Sexyashell

No Internet

Well little of it, I go to download a texture and the internet dies, Pfft karoo, anyways been focusing on my dissertation but have managed to throw this up.

Dead Space

Dead Space is a survival horror set in space, it has quite a linear story but it doesn't ruin the gameplay. It has many new ideas that have not been used in video games such as the zero oxygen, whilst getting chased by a group of aliens and having only a minute to get to the next air lock, it can be really tense. Some of the weapons are quite innovative and I definately like the fact that there is no excess of ammunition, it's either make sure you are hitting your target or enjoy fist fighting alien Mike Tyson.

The game is quite dark and adds a lot of atmosphere especially that there are a lot of corridors and corners, every time there is a hole in the wall you expect a huge alien plant to grab you by the foot, but there are times when this doesn't happen, leaving you not expecting it.

Things I would take from this are the way that the whole ship seems empty and you really feel alone, except for of course the enemies, I also like the way that the game makes tense moments even more tense by taking away oxygen, this could be done with our game with doors that may be stuck and the player will have to bash buttons to get through.

The things I don't like is that even though there is limited ammunition, the enemies are still quite easy to kill, I think enemies in horror games should always be quite difficult to defeat, unless you are going for a more arcade feel, in which Left 4 Dead does this brilliantly.

Another Window

Cutting windows

Putting some of the windows in, not finished yet just cutting out holes for them to slot in.

Television

Made a good old looking 70's tv.

Well

A quick well model

First Enemy Development/Concept

After A brain storming session, Steve and I came up with a few concept ideas for enemy characters. We have decided that we will be minimalistic on the enemy front, rather than making hords of enemies chasing you down or a hack and slash fest. The enemies will be far and few between. This will add more suspence and help add to the desolate feel of the building giving it a more abandoned, spooky feel and make you feel more lost and alone. We also decided to base the enemies on real life human fears and started naming some of the more obvious fears such as Nyctophobia (Fear of the dark), Trypanophobia (Fear of syringes) and Acrophobia (Fear of falling). With this in mind I started on the first of these Fear Characters "Fearacters" The Dark Man. We decided to make him have a smoke effect emitting from him, engulphing him in a black mist if you will. We will also look into animating a smoke texture over his entire body with areas of intence heat moving around (like embers).
After a shed load of problems He is almost complete. We managed to acheive the effect we where after but we I rigged and animated the model. The particles no longer worked.

Back to the drawing board. We managed to find out that graphics card are incapable of coping with a particle emitter on an animated mesh. So we eventually found that we could add the particles to the bones of the rig. But in doing this the effect we where after was lost. The particles where too clumped togeater so we changed from smoke to a sort of ash look.

We are happy with the result but need to work on the javascript for the animation of the textures a little more so that is appeares more randomly and has more of a rotation and life span.

Lighting Problem

The lighting wasn't appearing realistically because of the way I designed the level. I designed it so that the planes where one sided, opposed to two sided, my method saves polys... but creates a couple of little problems.


The lighting was going through buildings and casting shadows in certain rooms, which while it is a nice little horror effect, it's far from realistic, and these effects could be caused easily anyways, it just made everything look wrong.
The way I tackled this was creating a huge box around the whole level where there would be walls and ceilings, this means that I can replicate all of the walls in the level with less than 50 polys, it would have taken about 4000 if I had done it all two sided.


The box around the level. (It is transparent to show where it covers, it is not transparent in the engine)

Influence Map

An influence map I made, I found the template on deviant-art... Mood-Board Plus

Two new windows

A big long one alongside one of the corridors.


A boarded up one up high.

Pillar and feature window

Finished texturing all of the outside part, now I need to break up the rooms where the player can travel and delete ones that they can't. After this the whole thing should be down to around 6000 polys, broken up into parts so that it can be rendered in pieces with an object culling script.

Although the player won't be going upstairs some rooms need to be put in as it just shows the sky otherwise as seen on the images above.

I have also added the doorways in to the level, they just need cutting in, other doors need to be put in to the level and windows on the outsides of the level along with drain pipes, boards and planks, and a few other things just so it looks more run down, I am also going to add some decals of plants and ivy growing in areas just so it looks less cared for.

Font and possible cover image

The image is a stock image that I have edited and invert silhouetted? The font used is "Orator Std" which I found on my PC, I don't know if I have previously downloaded it or it was installed with Windows, I added a glow to it on photoshop and Iam quite happy with the look of it.

Reading...?

Been reading the book "Horror Video Games "Essays on the fusion of fear and play"" Contains a lot of reference we could investigate and apply to our project which could be very useful.

Concept Artest

We have taken on a concept artest to help us visualise our visions. All of the work she produces for us will be credited to her and she will be noted in all relevent documentation. We will also add links to her work, every time we show anything she produces for us.

Warley the Sketch up years

I have been working on a sketch up model of warley that we will be able to use for all sorts of reference such as item placement, character route, spawn locations, events and so on,

Outside Columns

WIP

Plan of route

Plan of our route

Researching Warley

After a few days of searching online, I have found a large amount of images and some text that give us a great insight into warley hospital. This building has recently under gone a mass revamp and is now being sold of as studio apartments. We have been discussing the possibility of setting the game in a not so rundown and batterd state. Rather a more clinicle and clean building but with a feel of abandonment.

Concept

I attempted making one of the rooms we found from a photo looking really run down, took me about 4 hours in total

Planning The Walls

As I am creating a shell over the rooms, I have to plan what will be seen otherwise a lot of time will be wasted on things that will not be seen. The red is where I will build the walls.

Warley Update

I accidentally replaced a blank material with another so some of the textures aren't quite right.

Warley Texturing

Added a "God Welcomes All" message embossed in stone above the place where a statue may stand.

Textured another part

I am taking my time with this so I have carefully textured the next section all the bricks line up almost perfectly.