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This is where most of the magic happens. First of all, I'd like to note that this is not a tutorial. I don't have any intention to teach people how to use 3ds max, UDK, Photoshop, etc...
This is just a document I'm writing about the design of the game, so I'd assume you already know modeling, texturing, and all that stuff. And hope this is an interesting read :)
Also, I noted that I didn't explain the script I had in mind. Sorry, my mistake, so I'll give a brief overview right now:
The player would start at the entrance of an office, behind him, a very long road, mostly consumed by a dark fog. The office in front of him didn't look too bad. It was in fact very friendly. As soon as the player steps in, all the lights turn off loudly, and in a couple of seconds, your flashlight turn on. At the first sight, the office just lost all of it's color, it's now monotone and dead looking.
After walking around for a bit, the player realizes that there is a locked room with the name Dr. Vang written on a sign by the door. AN: I added not only one, but two keys the player would have to find, because I tried to extend the gameplay as much as possible. But it didn't work, the game was short nonetheless.
After unlocking the door, and unlocking a chest the player would find a rock, at the rock's sight the flashlight would go crazy, and after a couple of seconds, you would start blinking, and each time you blinked, you are in a different place.
Those places are, a shady street, an abandoned hospital corridor, and a dark and sinister basement.
After that, the game would end and leave the player with a bunch of questions. That was the objective.
Well, with the script out of the way, let's talk about the production :)
The project itself contain:
4 locations
26 3D models
29 Textures
28 Materials
182 Kismet "blocks"
The package with all the assets has around 50mb.
The basic idea was: The player would find a rock that makes him procrastinate (also, he would wander off, but that isn't written anywhere). So, as soon as the player finds it he would go to a few locations, they are:
A dark street
A hospital
This "basement"
I was trying to play with the idea of the ‘fear of the unknown'. Looks like it worked pretty well, based on the feedback I got from the beta testers.
Sound was kind of interesting to work with too, because it's one of the first times I ever had to mess up with it in UDK, but at the end it worked out pretty well.
I used some free sounds from various websites, and an ambient music from Pro Scores, from VideoCopilot.net, which I made loopable.
At all times there is spooky ambient music playing, also, the player's steady heartbeat getting louder/faster as you approach key locations. Your flashlight would oscillate sometimes too, and also, some gameplay specific sounds were added, such as a chest opening, lights shutting down, etc...
The models and materials were pretty simple, just a bunch of office supplies and very few assets for the other smaller scenes.
Well, here are some images:
For the textures, most of them are from www.cgtextures.com , adjustments I made to them are limited to some tiling and resolution adjustments, nothing too fancy.
Most of the materials are a simple diffuse + normal map combo, with a few exceptions, the game doesn't have very complicated materials because it didn't need any.
I think that's it for the assets, I hope it was interesting.
In the next part, I'll try to go over the logic of the game, but outside kismet first, like level design, trigger locations, light and sound behavior, what is supposed to happen and where, etc.
Then in part 4 will be Kismet, and I hope to be able to go through everything there, since there's a lot to talk about.
And I'm not sure if there will be a part 5, but if there is, I hope I can talk a bit more about design/aesthetics.
