I visited the Royal armouries as part of my primary research i went here because there is a lot of medieval things and medieval castles and weapons. I took a lot of reference images from the armouries and will be using them to model with such as the bow picture is fantastic and ideal for what i am going for, the sort of style and tone of old medieval looks really cool.
The trip was very rewarding and I gained some insightful primary research, I made sure to keep the style and tone of the piece avoiding chinese tempting things and world war 2 things (there are a lot of those things in the royal armouries)
I liked the colours in the two photos above it seems that they liked dark blues a lot and reds.
The bow above was a good piece to look at and get inspiration from as I will be modelling a bow from the poem, i want something a bit more simple as its old old times and craft wasn't that far gone. In the poem as well I find that he focuses more on his wealth of gold and silver not his hunting he does that for pleasure so I don't think he would be too bothered about his bow being fancy.
I may have coats of armour in the grand hall as decorations.
We will see how it pans out in the long run I am thinking more along the line of chairs as the armour may distract the attention away from the audio of the poem.
I have given it some thought as to if i will use tactile effects in this piece but I'm not too sure If i would like him to be holding a weapon or a torch this is something to think about more as I start to develop my work.
LOTR - The Hobbit Swords - Awesome!
They had a really awesome exhibition of the Hobbit swords whilst I visited and i couldn't help take away photos :)
I really liked the textures of these pieces keeping it stylised as old but true to its design.
I was very interested in the section that paid a lot of detail into the construction of castles, I wanted something that was believable in the sense of one man could live there but i didn't want something on too big of a scale because he wasn't a King, he was a Lord.
So i payed great attention to detail here and used these images to influence my ideas of what the castle would look like.
So for our FMP's we have been given the chance to pick anything we want as long as we write our our proposal briefs for them. I first started out thinking too big such as creating a whole world or something in mythological times or history as i really enjoy these two subjects.
I went from this idea to a what if scenario involving animals but then after my presentation of this idea (what if animals had the same intelligence levels as us?) I realised that it wasn't focused enough and that i would be wasting time trying to grasp the concept of the game level. What was the point of it? What was i showing? How was the player going to interact with this story? Everyone really liked the idea so maybe this is something i could explore in the future however Matt's feedback from it all promoted me to change my decision just in time.
So, my final idea which i am 100% set on is to design a 3D game level which explores a poem my dad used to read to me when i was little. It is lyrics to a song 'The Tower' However, i have never heard this song and just hear it in my head as a poem so that is what i want the audience to experience too. An interactive poetry based experience which involves the player in a visually beautiful storyline and aesthetically pleasing environment also.
I will begin my research by depicting the poem and go through completely how i want the story to be told. Then i shall move onto researching poetry itself and narration, how to tell a good story as sound is key here and very important, the whole piece could be messed up if i don't find the correct narrator. I will then research loads of game's going through gameplay, style, tone, sound and use these experience to fuel my own project and further push my research and skills. I will then focus on games companies and how they do it adding in professionalism to my piece. Followed by the obvious, moodboards, sketches, concept art, floor plans, etc...
Here is my statement of intent that i wrote, I plan to keep to it a lot. The only thing that i may have trouble with it keeping to the interactions of the level, personally i don't know if i want this fully this is just something Matt was saying to include but i want the level to be narrative based and i want the player to focus on the music and narration and visuals more than anything. This was influenced by poetry and art and games like Dear Esther so I'm trying to create that sense in the game.
Back story
So to create a deeper level of backstory and understanding i decided to depict the poem and take parts from it which i could visually represent such as the white bird flying by, the bower, the tower etc and you could see the poem unfold as you got deeper into the level itself.
I found that doing this helped me a great deal and i was able to get a better understanding of the story and level layout and what i wanted to model inside the level itself.
Depict the poem here talk about what happens what you want to focus on show and get out of the poem and experience overall.
STYLE AND TONE OF THE PIECE-
I also wanted to keep the style and tone of the piece throughout the entire game level, from depicting the poem in my head i saw it as an old medieval fairy tale or story as it uses a little bit of old english and it sounds posh throughout. So i researched a lot medieval history and lifestyle so i could get a feel for the modelling and textures before i started my work.
Researching this way proved to help me a lot and i felt from it that it gave more more influences and more ideas to work helping to fuel my imagination into making the game level.
From this whole module i have learned the absolute importance of sound and in my opinion from the research i've done and the dissertation and practical i think it is one of the main if not the main thing to incorporate into horror games and film. So for my practical i knew that i was going to spend time on the sound perfecting it as much as i could with the time i had left, originally i was going to record my own sounds in the studio booth but after searching around on http://freesound.org/ i found absolutely every sound i needed so there was no point in wasting time in there. I had already planned out my floor plans and elevations so i took this and drew up another sketch of the floor plan but this time i used it as a sound plan i also worked out the timing of the game level in unity by counting how long it would take the character to walk at full speed i then counted minimum speed and worked my sound out around these times.
Here's the sound plan and my notes on timing -
I found it was very helpful to do this as i would have definitely missed sounds whilst trying to script and i also would have been way off base in the timing i found myself looking at the sound plan the entire time, this practical has reminded me how important it is to be organised and prepared.
I researched into sound for my paper and practical looking at horror films and games and the style they tend to go for such as Red Barrel's Outlast 2013 (listen to PEWDIEPIE's commentary too, man that guy is funny.)
You can hear in the background that there is pretty much an ominous and dark sound playing in the background, i have put one of these in my game level plus a heartbeat that gets faster as you drop down the psychological drop. It's also filled with little details such as door clicks and camcorder clicks i think little detail is very necessary in horror game play and creates realism more on a whole i tried to show this by including small detail in my game level such as the flickering of the light bulb in the children's room and the scripted box collider attached to it creating a flickering light bulb noise so they matched together creating a more realistic effect.
I also researched around the internet looking for inspiration and found quite a few videos on youtube of ominous and dark sounds, i noticed that they use a lot of layers in the soundtracks which makes it much more effective to create horror sound, they also use a lot of low and strange tones mixing them together to create new ones. Here's some of the tracks i listened to -
From all this i took inspiration and techniques studied and started to edit the sounds i found on http://freesound.org/
Whilst editing a noticed that some files were unreadable by final cut some adobe audio files this was an easy fix using audacity and exporting as AIFF files.
I found the easiest way for my to work was to be organzied by constantly naming files and organizing them i was able to easily see what was in the sequence box in final cut as i dragged in my sound files, i could then easily drag and drop onto final cut cutting files down and placing them where i needed.
The screen shot below and above shows my organization of folders and naming
I found that i had enough time in this project to tweak sound files fading them in and out with key frames so that they ran smoother into each other as a whole. This also worked out well when i scripted my box colliders fading in and out gave it more realism and set the tone better for the scene.
Just to make sure i had the correct sound times before starting scripting i thought it best to make an animatic using screenshots of the scene and placing audio where the box colliders would be, using also the timing from earlier preparation i was able to get pretty much a spot on take of how long my sounds should be. Here's the animatic i made in final cut pro -
I was really chuffed with myself on scripting i managed to do it completely on my own with the acceptation of one script that i could not figure out which Anna helped me with (it was the script that makes the player restart at the beginning, now that i know this i will remember it).
As i haven't touched a script since year one (i think) it was a breath of fresh air to be able to figure it out, granted it did take a little time but i feel much better now knowing that i can do it on my own, i had a lot of help from forums and the unity community - this website is YOUR FRIEND - http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/4988-Flickering-Light
I was also able to find my old blog and use it as a memory flash, it really helped and i'm glad i left it open to access, some of the tutorials i blogged down have some real valuable information.
Here's a few screenshots of me scripting my scene after testing and errors i discovered that the sounds had to be parented to the box collider and all the little buttons you had to tick and un-tick such as loop sound, trigger on and play when awake.
I used box colliders and the scripting code which made sound happen when the object was walked into 'a trigger' it also meant that if you walked into another trigger the old sound would stop and the new would begin this worked brilliantly for me as i had timed it all out to fit in the pace of the first person controller speed. I also found that looping sounds was useful such as in the Illusion corridor the loop and the fire sounds, they played perfectly on a loop.
Overall i learned a lot about sound this module and the importance of it in the horror genre, it creates suspense and gives you tingles down the back of your spine especially when your wearing headphones and it sounds like its coming from you left, right or behind you.
Tactile effects were another major thing i learned about in this module they help the player feel more in control but really the game designer is just giving the player the tools to be able to see more horrible nightmares in the dark. From the research of my dissertation i looked into games such as Alan Wake, Outlast and Silent Hill 3, these games all use tactile effects in a very good way too mixing it with complimenting lighting to set the scene in a very dark but interactive way. Here's some gameplay from the games showing how the effects are used such as torch lights and camcorder equipment used to see in the dark more.
Outlast - 2013
Alan Wake - 2010
Silent Hill 3 - 2003
The above examples show the play on effect horror games use when mixing effects and light, a lot of people are afraid of the dark and even more so what can be seen or lives in it. I will be using the darkness in my game level to exploit this feeling of fear and show i understand how it is used.
At first i thought about using a camcorder like in Outlast but then i realised that as the scene has a victorian style room in it there wouldn't have been cam corders invented so to keep the tone and the realism of the level (which horror games always do) i decided to go with the torch option.
Here's some screenshots i took and a talk through of what i did.
So it turned out all i had to do was model a torch in maya import it, attach a light source to it and then parent it to the first person controller. I then discovered that the camera didn't move with the torch and it looked a little buggy and unrealistic i found an easy fix for this by parenting it to the main camera so as the player moved the screen the camera moved to which then the player and torch moved also.
See above the difference of having no light source attached and just the torch it does give a spooky feel to the level however the fact that you can't see any textures takes away the feel of the game and you sit there wondering why you can't really see much.
See above again how the scene looks much better now with the tactile effect it creates a sense of mystery and exploration while the player is put on edge as everything is in the dark and they must shine their torch on the scene to see properly.
I learnt a lot on tactile effects this module and found that they are a very good effect to place in a horror game giving the player 'control' and a tool to explore horror.
Particles
I also used particles in my horror scene, originally i was going to use fog like in the film silent hill -
This film plays on the vulnerability you feel when you cannot see it effects people very much like the dark, you don't know what lurks in the fog plus the fact that your visibility is compromised just means theres going to be something there waiting for you. I had a little trouble in unity with particles this time they didn't seem to do what i wanted them too so after trying for a while to create a realistic fog i was happy with i randomly came across a surprise as i was experimenting with them. Just as a joke i attached the texture i had made for the illusion corridor and weirdly enough it really freaked me out. They were squares of illusion dotting around the screen and disappearing coming closer to me and then moving away, i thought to myself if this freaks me out then it is sure to freak others out.
I tested this theory on Jeff and Tim and they seemed to agree that it was very strange, Tim even went 'WOAH.' Which was a really nice reaction to see as thats what i was going for.
Here's some screenshots of my particles created and a little bit about what i did -
I had a lot of torches at the beginning of my level but later on in the game from testing again from Jeff and Tim i realised that the torches took away the spot light from the Illusion corridor and you focused more on them instead of the walls behind them. I did however keep two in the fog room to create an orange glow effect on the room along with a nice crackling sound of fire and a touch of smoke to make the fire particles look more realistic. I like the overall result i got and am glad with the decision i made to get rid of the vast amount of torches i had in the first place.
See below - this is the effect I got from experimenting with the textures and particles, i know its hard to see in this picture but in the game level you feel as if they are all just looking at you even though they have no eyes, its a really weird thing to see coming towards the screen.
I also tried to create a sort of mist on the ceiling like evil was trying to break through it i got this inspiration from the television show Lost as i remember watching it one of the things that really scared me and got to me was the black mist i think it was down to the fact that it had a mind of its own and because you can't psychically grab mist if it got a hold of you then that was it. I really tried construct a realistic mist but i haven't been able to do so yet, i had better luck with the smoke under the bed but with Anna's help i may be able to incorporate it in before hand in.
Lost - 'Black Mist'
And here are my screenshots of black particles effects
See above and below my smoke particles coming from under the bed as if something were under there trying to get out or suggesting there is somewhere else to go...
Particles are an effect that create more realism in horror and an all around sense of uncanny and ease i think this shows my understanding from research and experimentation with the particle systems.
