[WIP] Quinn- A psychological Horror-Adventure (Weekly Updates)

Community Showcases
1

Welcome to project “Quinn”!

I am very glad that you have found my project and take a look at it. Please tell me what you think about it in a comment or leave some constructive crisicism! Please consider the project background and the team that is working on it :slight_smile:

INFO: All the “[…]” in this thread contain secret information that will be revealed from time to time. So, please let your imagination run free :slight_smile: AND PLEASE keep in my mind, that some of the arguments are my personal opinion. I don’t want to offend anyone or want you to believe what I am saying. I just want to make clear how I do things and why! :stuck_out_tongue:

What or who is “Quinn”?
Quinn Simmons is your 9-year old son in this game. One day, you (Alex Simmons) and Quinn want to visit Quinns grandparents. They live very far away, so the trip by car takes a little while. As almost every child, Quinn get’s bored and starts to whine. As you turn on the radio and a song of his favourite band […] starts to play, he calms down and falls asleep again. All alone at nighttime, driving down the road, your eyelids drooped as you grow tired. […] The car breaks through the crash barriers, rolls over several time and stops at the foot of the hill. Pained and frightened you wake up lying on the ground beside your car. Quinn is gone.

Why do I do that?
I really see “Quinn” as “my baby”. I have so much in mind I want to put into practice. But moreover, I want to learn the process of a game being developed. I want to experience everything that has to do with it: get in touch with the community, talk to other developers, run into beginner’s mistakes, performance issues, bugs, code that works perfect and on and on and on…
Besides that, I am pretty selective when it comes to horror games and there is ALWAYS something I don’t like. Basically, with “Quinn” I want to create a horror game of my likes, make it better with yours and hope that you guys like it in the end.

Who am I?
I am a 25-year old software developer from Germany. About one year ago I searched for good game engines I can work with easily and I think Unity3D was definitely the best choice, as I am used to program with c# and javascript. In my job I run software projects, but only for business software and so on. So basically “Quinn” is my first game, please keep that in mind :slight_smile:

Is there a story?
Well, yes. A tiny bit of the story, or how the story starts, you have already read. The rest is in my head and will maybe never be revealed…for a reason :slight_smile: There is a beginning and an end. Between that, the story is build with puzzles, signs and cutscenes. In my opinion, a good horror game has enough story to lead the player in a certain direction, but also has less story to leave room for imagination - I really think, the players mind forms the best storys - you don’t have to do that as a developer for them.

Basic game mechanics/features:
controls by intuition (no on-screen hints / controls can only be changed in main menu), openable/locked doors, voice output (english first), “checkpoints” that are only usable with certain items (e.g. typewriter / ribbon), impaired/diffused/disturbed sight through certain events (hits/drops/mind), different walking speed states (after the car crash you won’t be able to walk like you are used to because of injury / maybe later you can walk “right” and faster), stamina (to avoid endless running :)), flashlight (yes, I also don’t like it, but only if you have it ALL THE TIME and ENDLESS, you will get the flashlight later in the game and you will have to find batteries to turn it on).

NOTE: As the provider of my internet connection at home seems to be to busy to get it up and running I only have limited access to the internet. For this reason I have only a couple of pictures to show you at first.

I really try to keep you up to date with weekly updates, please check them out! :slight_smile:
#WEEK 1: Building the first scene (car accident) testing some graphics and effects

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3

After some hours of testing and searching for ways to acomplish mechanisms I want to implement, here is a basic “Roadmap” for the game for the next few weeks:

  • Pause menu
  • Pause menu / Options
  • Pause menu / Options / Video
  • Pause menu / Options / Audio
  • Pause menu / Options / Controls
  • Main menu
  • Main menu / Options
  • Main menu / Options / Video
  • Main menu / Options / Audio
  • Main menu / Options / Controls
  • Openable Doors
  • Locked doors (only openable with specific Item)
  • Camera bob (walking)
  • Camera bob (sprinting)
  • walking “injured”
  • Toggle walk/sprint
  • Stamina
  • Blink (camera effect)
  • Picking up items
  • “Inventory”
  • Using items
  • Basic flashlight (with toggle)
  • Batterie manager (for the flashlight)
  • Footstep sound manager

I know, seems pretty much for the first week, but I have already implemented some of them yesterday :stuck_out_tongue: I hope to deliver some videos this weekend! :smile:

4

Hello guys,

had some hours working on this project and just wanted to show you the results!

In the first video you can see some basic implementations like the pause menu, openable locked doors, “keys” to unlock locked doors, camera bob, footstep sounds and the basic character movement (which is already changed since yesterday :p)

This second video shows a little bit of messing around with shaders, terrain assets and lightning. No optimizations made right now, as you can see, just for testing purposes to get comfortable with it. Assets are placeholders and will be replaced in the future.

Please tell me what you think! If you have any further ideas, please let me know :smile:

5

Hi

You are organised and have a solid idea of what you want to accomplish. This is something rare around these forums.
First, you should be careful how realistic you make it. Injuries and stuff? Sure, sounds good, but there is a fine line between realistic, but immersive and realistic, but annoying.

So careful how much you play with the camera effects and movement controller.

If you plan on using physics, rigidbodies and lots of raycasting in the game, you should first focus on them before doing anything else.
You will be amazed how difficult it is to make them run right and how much testing goes into it.

Good luck.

6

Hi primus,

thank you very much for taking the time! Yeah, that injured-walking-stuff is something I had in my mind and I first thought it would be really cool, but after testing it yesterday, I was annoyed after a short time :smile: I’m working right now on a cutscene “manager” for the game and maybe that is the way to present the drowsiness of the player character after that crash in the beginning of the game.

You’re right! The camera effects used in the pictures and the second video are primarily applied for me to understand what they do, how they work and if they fit to my needs. With the movement, I try to keep it as “standard” as possible…it’s a basic first person controller with smoother mouse look and a toggle for sprinting and walking. Camera-side there is to much modification at the moment, that is correct :slight_smile:

Thank you for these suggestions! I really try to make it as simple as possible. For every functionality I want to implement, I try out different ways. So raycasting was once used to pick up the items or open the doors, but I changed the way it works without raycasting at all and I’m pretty satisfied with it.

:smile: Hardest part will be the terrain for me, but I’ll try my best :slight_smile: Thanks!

7

For the terrain I hardly recommend the built in editor. It’s very poor.
I can point you toward three paths for achieving a good looking level:

  1. Buy terrain editors from asset store (RTP3 and even voxel based) but they are a bit expensive. They are totally worth the one time payment though.
  2. Creating / buy props. You can have 3d model of rocks, cliffs and what not. If they are well setup and modeled could boost your game quality by a lot.
  3. Use a procedural terrain building tool. I’m pretty sure there were a couple of free ones around the Unity forum. A quick search on Google will reveal them for sure. They return good results and sometimes unexpectedly good results.

Always remember, nature is beautiful because it is not perfect. There are thousands of materials and colors that form a beautiful environment.

8

You’re so right :smile: By “hardest part” I meant the use of the built-in editor. I mean, you can really achieve a good-looking environment…with a lot of patience…and an eye for the details :smile: The biggest problem is me on this point: I am a little bit impatient and I am freaking out when the results don’t fit my expectations. I think, there is a lot of potential if you know how to use it right, but it takes time, patience and accuracy. Regarding you (again, very helpful) suggestions:

  1. I use the “Advanced Terrain Editor” (doesn’t even know what the name really is :smile:) and it’s quite better than the built-in one, but there are many situations where you just can’t achieve a satisfying result. I will see how far my expectations comply with the first results in 2 or 3 weeks, maybe I’ll have to spend some money on it - after seeing some videos, it would be totally worth it!

  2. Well, as I am a software developer with no clue of modeling, I have already bought “some” :smile: There are great level designers on this forum, from which you can learn how the placement of props really makes the whole level look absolutely amazing. I try to learn from their ideas and skills and hope to get things looking good.

  3. Definately! At first, I’ve tried to design it all by hand after drawing it on a piece of paper, but it just don’t turned out as I had in my mind. Now I will focus on putting my “map” (that I have partially in mind) on a procedural generated terrain and change it if needed. Self-made terrains always look kind of artificial.

Such a nice conclusion, will keep this definately in mind :slight_smile:

9

Good morning everybody,

I had some time to work on this project yesterday, so here is the roadmap after working a couple of hours:

  • [DONE] Pause menu
    - Pause menu / Options / Video
    - Pause menu / Options / Audio
    - Pause menu / Options / Controls
  • [DONE] Main menu
    - Main menu / Options / Video
    - Main menu / Options / Audio
    - Main menu / Options / Controls
  • [DONE] Openable Doors
  • [DONE] Locked doors (only openable with specific Item)
  • [DONE] Toggle walk/sprint
  • [DONE] Camera bob (walking)
  • [DONE] Camera bob (sprinting)
  • [DONE] Stamina
  • [DONE] Picking up items
    - “Inventory” (basically done, but not yet visible)
  • [DONE] Using items
  • [DONE] Basic flashlight (with toggle)
  • [DONE] Batterie manager (for the flashlight)
  • [DONE] Footstep sound manager

Of course, there were some bugs and glitches:

  • [FIXED] you can press sprint button while jumping
    - Doors glitching through the character, when opening (Rigidbody…I hate you)
  • [FIXED] Audio does not stop onPause

Please tell me what you think about the parts beeing implemented. Even if I like them that way, doesn’t mean they are good! :slight_smile:

10

I’ve worked a couple of hours on the first scene of the game on the weekend and in my opinion, it tourned out really well. It is just a basic setup and some props (like the grass) are just spread randomly, but I think this is something I can start with. I’ve decided to let the game start at dawn, because I think it is more frightening, when it turns night later in the game and you got used to the sun light etc. Take a look at it and please tell me what you think - it would be very helpful :slight_smile:

11

Nice stuff. A few things:

  1. If you don’t have any experience with modelling, consider using prebuilt 3D models. If your game is gonna be non-commercial, there’s a lot of CC stuff you can use. Check this pages:

www.turbosquid.com (it has lots of great free stuff)
www.sharecg.com (have in mind that poser models can be exported to fbx)
www.opengamerart.org

  1. I’m more or less in the same situation as you. In my experience, you don’t need to go into modelling as far as you don’t use animated characters. The moment you use animated characters, blender (or 3Ds Max or similar) is unavoidable.

  2. Think about managing terrain directly with code. You can always run, copy the terrain and paste it later. If you’re a developper, handling objects from code is much easier than doing it from the editor, which is a headache. It’s a bit difficult at the beginning (documentation about it is quite bad) but it worths.

12

Thank you very much for your response!

  1. Yes, the props I am using or gonna be using are either bought or free for non-commercial. At the moment I am working on the first scene and try to find the proper assets, so thank you for the links! :slight_smile:

  2. I have made up my mind before and the game is completely designed to work without animations (yes, there are some animations of props, but no charcter or something like that)

  3. Something I have never thought about :smile: I will have a look at it :slight_smile:

13

Update No. 4 :slight_smile:

I have implemented the main and the pause menu just as I wanted to (I think it looks pretty cool :smile:). The basic settings are also implemented (audio volumen and quality settings increase/decrease). I don’t really know if there is anything left, which could be neccessary for the options menu, but if there is something that comes in to your mind, please tell me :slight_smile:

The intro movie (it is no video at the moment) is now skipable by pressing the Return or Escape key. I have decided to make it skipable, because it will be aprox. 5 minutes long in the final game and I don’t want to threat the player to watch it. Don’t know if this is the right way, but you can tell me what you think :slight_smile:

14

I like this a lot!

15

Thank you very much! :slight_smile:

16

I have been dealing with it lately. Since I have used a lot of help about programming on internet, I think it would be nice to write what I discovered (giving back is a nice thing after having taking :smile:), so I’m doing a tutorial. Check it here:

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/208953-Generating-and-managing-terrains-at-runtime-from-code

17

Subscribed! :slight_smile: I will see how I can use this in my projects, thanks.

18

Me and Quinn are now on Facebook. Follow us if you are interested in the game:

https://www.facebook.com/nikayLP

19

This is looking good, love the menu, it looks stunning!

20

Wow, thank you! :slight_smile: