Its been a while since there's been any update on the mod; I took about a month off of it altogether during school, blah, etc., However, I've made some pretty sizable changes in the past month; the biggest of these was moving to Alien Swarm - currently, it also mounts Left4Dead 2's .vpks, but ideally I'll have better textures by then.
The Story So Far
Originally, the story in House of Kernaghan had already happened; you were exploring the house and reading memoirs of those who had previously lived there. As I was playing with gameplay, I came to find that I really didn't like having combat in any traditional shooter form; it broke up to story rather than contributing to it. That lead me to sort of a turning point: a plot that didn't involve emotionally, gameplay that wasn't fun, and a bunch of really cool minor mechanics without any actual use.
These are all pretty standard problems people see in game development, so I'll kind of gloss over the dilemmas and their corresponding solutions. Instead, I'll use this article how I promised I would and give something a little closer to the new story:
The player walks into historic Kernaghan House, a mansion by a river somewhere on the southern side of the Midwest United States. He has a very specific reason to be there, and he's trying to talk himself out of it and egg himself on at the same time. The story of the home's original occupant(s) are retold by the same rather unreliable narrator. Again, combat, health, and the narrative have been scaled back: they're all still there in pretty much the way I had them before, but what the player sees has been reduced pretty well.
Appropriate Gameplay Changes
When I first listed the mod here, I boasted about the fabulous ideas I had to deal with health and combat - mostly, these involved candlelight, narrative, and a few other portions that I'll probably still have in the game. The candles, which kept attacking specters away, have begun to remind me of Minecraft and Amnesia. That's not a bad thing, but I've revised their effect to be slightly more in-line with everything else now that you're no longer fighting hordes of hellish demons.
What's Left to be Done?
I've got most of the basic mapping out of the way, so that isn't much of a problem. Currently, I'm lacking textures - neither Left4Dead 2's nor Alien Swarm's have anything suitable for a hundred-year-old house. Half-Life 2 and episodic textures tend towards the similarly disappointing. Also, I need paintings in the game that reflect specific characters, and I've never been good at that sort of thing at all. The script, music, and voicings, while in no way finished, are far enough along to not need anyone else to work on them at the moment. To sum up, if you're:
- a Texture Artist
- a Modeller
- Good with Alien Swarm UI
- a Painter (digitally or on more traditional mediums),
let me know if you're interested, and I'll probably have something for you to play with and some stuff to work on. Previously, I really wanted to do the entire thing all on my own, but I see now that its unlikely to work out well that way.
