I’m currently in school for Game Design and Development and am in the process of creating and coding my own game. I’m caught between the UDK package and Unity3d game engines. In any case, my question is this: I want to create a “pop in” effect where a monster, or scene of gore quickly flashes in and flashes out, creating a psychological scare for the player. I’ve noticed this in games such as “The Suffering” for playstation/xbox, and “Doom 3”. The Fear franchises as well, like when Alma spider walks from under an office desk but disappears before coming in contact with the player. what is the actual technical terminology for this type of action? and how do i know if my chosen game engines will support it? thanks in advance!
What are your chosen game engines?
And, what you need is to animate that creature in a 3D program and with it, an appropriate shader.
Both UDK and Unity support this with no problem. As already mentioned you could use an animated shader, change the opacity of the model, or just stop rendering it at a certain point and spawn particles such as smoke etc.
In Unity you could easily set up the ‘gore’ flashes by switching cameras. For example, you have a clean corridor the player is walking down and you wish to quickly change it so it’s covered in blood with corpses. First you’d need to duplicate the corridor and fill it with your gore props. Next you just need a second camera in the gore room in the same relative position as the first, turn off the first camera and then turn on the second which effectively teleports you do the gore room. After a period of time, or entering a trigger, you can switch the cameras back so you’re back in the clean corridor. Add some dirty GUI images and perhaps some post processing for a nightmare look and you’re done. Alternatively you could experiment with changing the position of the player / camera. There are many ways to achieve this effect.
I prefer the duplication method rather than trying to instantiate or toggling the visibility of many objects, it’s much easier to work with but again it depends on the complexity of what you’re trying to achieve.
In regards to what engines support this, I’d say most modern engines that handle shaders and multiple cameras can do what you want quite easily. I used this effect over 10 years ago in the Half-Life engine (minus the shaders) so it’s more down to your technical skills and creativity.
i will agree with adam that the method he proposed does work. however most game studios will instantiate or toggle the visibility of entire environments. however the best way to pull something like this off it a doorway effect. for example have you ever seen a movie where the people are running away from the bad guy and they are inside the house. then they run through the front door and as the door is swung wide open it covers 90% of the field of view and then the people are outside. the director simply uses the door as a shield to keep the audience to notice that he cut the camera when he did not want the audience to realise he did in fact cut the camera. the most iconic game that can show examples of this is Dead Space 2 there are countless scenes in the game that show this idea. however in a game you will need to be more like a ninja. for example when your character is walking down the hallway say he feels some intense pain and falls to the ground and u make ur camera zoom in on this action so that is clips out the rest of the environment then in that brief instance of not seeing the environment you swap all ur objects. it is possible to do this and will look fantastic when done correctly. and if you code or ur coder makes the scripts for this type of instance generally, you can easily apply the same code with some tweaks to other instances of these “Episodes” in ur game. so good luck and please post some screen shots when you get it up and running.
thanks guys!!! i’ve been looking all over for an answer to this question and you guys are the only ones who gave me exactly the answer i was looking for. thanks a bunch, i will def be using that to develop my game! @ Maws, YES, that is exactly what i am looking to do. i’m building a CPU that’s most likely going to be to spec for the UDK Package. i really really want to use UDK (because it looks utterly fantastic) but i’m worried about licensing and marketing issues. So, for that, i may go with Unity3d. You quoted " however in a game you will need to be more like a ninja. for example when your character is walking down the hallway say he feels some intense pain and falls to the ground and u make ur camera zoom in on this action so that is clips out the rest of the environment then in that brief instance of not seeing the environment you swap all ur objects." that’s the exact idea i got in my head. it should be a bit before i get to the 3d modeling and such, because i’m still in the C++ text based stuff. but as soon as i get something that can be shown, i will definitely post some screen shots. I may even do a Beta if possible.
UDK Engine 3.0, Unreal 2.0 (if i really really have to, last resort) or Unity3d. although a buddy of mine just informed me that you can get a dev pack of the Cryengine3. that’s insane!!!
Don’t discount the good use of sound effects and well timed music for these sort of situations.
Sound is the key part of the scare in games/movies. Try watching horror movie with sound muted. I did, nothing scared me. Then i watched a horror movie in the cinema where’s very loud. Oh man, on some parts I screamed like a baby 
You shouldn’t share stuff like that on a public forum. 
i agree, sound is very important. i want to record my own sound fx but i have no clue on how to do it. the game i’m working on is a horror/torture game, so i’d like to get some sound fx that make you get that taste in the back of your throat right before you vomit. if i can use like a microphone apparatus type of setup, that’d be good. i wanna get a disc grinder and run it through a chicken bone to get the metal on bone sound. nasty!!! or a power drill through a ribcage. i have no idea how sound fx such as these would be created, but i would love to learn how. oh, and good voice acting too. like a blood curdling scream as some guy gets a knife to the throat or something. the guy i’m collaborating with has the original score from his movie that he wants to include in the game. he’s got a sick mind so i have faith that he’ll make it nice.
Hmm, I am no sound expert, but I have seen people using egg shells to simulate bone crushing (you have to alter the sound digitally of course), but that is the idea. You can also actually use a black n decker and drill through some actual meat. People doing folley use crazy stuff, some related to the sound (meaning obvious) and some not so much (you would never imagine what it actually is).
Of course this is best done at a studio and if you book a studio the guys there know how to do this stuff. They usually have stuff, you can look online for libraries, but I haven’t seen anything specifically for your needs.
Generally though you can achieve decent (passable for indie) quality with a laptop and a mic, something you can take to a butcher’s shop I mean. The studio quality (very high) is what allows sound to be distorted enough to be altered into something else. A simple setup will easily break down, the same way a jpg breaks down, compared to hdr when you work with curves, levels and exposure, though it’s probably enough for your needs, studios make sound meant to be heard in a theater/club, in which quality is paramount since sounds are played back at a high volume
hmmmm…egg shells isn’t a bad idea. i think i’ll mostly go with grinding and drilling sounds though i still have to go through the original script of the movie to pull some ideas of torture tools and such. the director says he’s got at least 60 different things or more that can be used. i was thinking about putting oranges or eggs in a sock or flexible bag of some sort, so i can get that “thump” sound or crackling sound. going to a sound studio is a pretty good idea, i can’t believe i didnt think of that. thanks dude. i def want high quality so i can market this game in the future. thanks again guys for all your suggestions and help.