Typical Horror Game: Hotel, PT Demo Inspired

Community Showcases
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I started work on a PT style horror game taking place in a hotel a little less than a week ago. I am a programmer, and making models is not my strong suit. However, I’ve started making some example builds. You can check the basic examples here. Keep in mind, it’s still very early development. That’s why I’m posting it here, I want your guys’ comments, suggestions, and criticism. If you think I should stop working on the project, tell me why! I will accept all comments. I would really like some suggestions for what needs to be improved, worked on, fixed (if there are bugs you have), and just general suggestions. Here are a list of fixes I will work on (that I noticed) for the current version (0.0.2):

  • Image effects are extremely strong; graphics are only decent on medium computers when resolution is lowest in window
  • Lightmaps are pixelated in areas; Unity’s packing isn’t the best friend of mine. I heard there would be improvements in 5.4, but I have yet to see them…
  • Scene is limited to a single room; I have spent most of my past week wasted on trying to get lightmaps to work with Unity 5 on prefabs (yes I know it’s changed in Unity 5, and prefabs don’t natively support lightmaps). I am waiting for feedback on letting lights support ‘isBaked’ as a set accessible field (check out my forum post too, yes I am new to the forums, so I apologize)
  • I will remove the moving red ball; it was to get DoF working with a variable range based on raycasting. I’m still not hooked on it. I might remove DoF all together (let me know)
  • Lights seem too bright
  • Lights on the wall, small lights above the door, and the door handles are somewhat low poly; not a priority right now, however
  • Carpet floor is low resolution; I had an older version of the “room” model in 0.0.1, and the carpet was properly scaled for that. I just simply need to change the size of the substance (which is actually metal).
  • Light artifacts creating circles (bias too low?) at certain angles on walls
  • Anti aliasing (most likely a result of the ridiculous DoF) artifacts on the door at certain angles

Remember, it’s really early on in development. I am shooting for not having a door that you walk through to repeat. The “room” you are in for the builds is a modular chunk that will be one of multiple prefabs that will be spawned to make a seamless level generation (hence my discussion of lightmapped prefabs). It would be a little less of a ‘ripoff’ of PT Demo if you’re more or less just exploring in this style. My original idea was to have it simply loop around (have 4 instances back-to-back of the room you spawn in, with 90-degree angle pieces to make a giant square “circle”), but after thinking about the modular aspect, I started to consider having levels randomly generated.

I really like the aspect of it being lit well. I’m thinking of also maybe adding slightly more open spaces to make the user feel very comfortable. Jump scares will not be common, as I’m wanting to get on a more ‘psychological’ side of the experience (the more I talk about it, the more cliche this whole project seems). I’m thinking a significant portion of the game will simply be no creepy/scary scenes. This can really make the user feel calm without being alert every second. Then action can happen when they least expect it. I have all sorts of ideas: The doors opening, carpet rotting or something, lights going out (but not necessarily to be a jump scare), and anything else I can think of.

Please leave a comment! Suggestions, what you think, absolutely anything you think.

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Hi. I am very interested in checking this out, but I didn’t see any files in your provided link. I am a little familiar with Google Drive, so maybe I missed something?

Thanks

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Is it still not working? It maybe had to upload. I was uploading them as it was posting, and they’re somwhat large files.

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I think the links work but it is a bit much to expect someone to run an exe without any screenshots or information.

I like the idea a lot, in fact I’m going for the same thing with my game. If I manage to run the program on a vm machine I’ll get back to you with feedback.

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Thanks for the response. There are some images in the forum post I made about issues I was having, if that helps you! I was just too excited to get it posted that I didn’t include any images. It’s also still very early in development. Maybe in a week if I’m able to get my modular map pieces made, as well as a script that will generate the map at runtime, I might make a video. It just seems a little to early to make any kind of video if all I’m showing is image effects and a rough modeled scene.
Thanks for the reponse, I didn’t even think about adding images originally.

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OK I had a quick go and yeah, you must have gone way over the top with the image effect stack, it barely runs smoothly.

[WIP] The Horror Room

All I’ve got in mine is a lightmap and a vingette and it runs fairly smoothly. Get rid of DOF it’s a real resource hog.

that being said, I like the look and feel, I’d drop an FPS controller so you can move around with the mouse.

The corridor length is about the right width and door look good. I never did get the seamless T shaped corridor working, how are you going to do that.

The other thing, I’d suggest (bear in mind I only have about 6 months experience with unity) is I’d start prototyping gameplay with just plain meshes and cubes etc. I regret jumping straight into the lightmap side of things too early.

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Thanks for the respone. Build 0.0.2 should have a character controller.

I will bake light’s with extras extending outside so that they will act as the light’s in the next scene. Then it will be seamless.