That is seriously cool, great job! I love the fact that the pose changes each time. Perhaps you can have her covering her face from a distance and then, like the weeping angels, when she gets too close she uncovers her face and stares right at you.
The lights going out in the living room worked really well too. I think you’ve really nailed the effect. I had an idea with something similar where the player is in a corridor with a “weeping angel” style creature pursuing them, and the lights go out in the corridor with the door at the end open, and the player suddenly hears giggling and rushing footsteps right behind them so they have to run like crazy to reach the door. A simple variation on the “water horror”.
Are you doing this all in blueprints or mix of C++ as well?
Thanks. That dumb doll got me so many times, unexpectedly, while trying to make the video!
The lights going out, and the tiny footstep sound was actually the clown moving from his spot in the dining room. The door opening in the living room was also part of another event. Those things would probably already have happened before Kiki actually starts attacking. I set her to start attacking immediately for debugging, and recording videos.
When Kiki first moves into a room, she cuts the lights out. At that point it is best to run to the lights and turn them on so you can see where she is at. I skipped that part in the video, because I have all of the light switches lit up at the moment, so I can stop getting killed! haha … I may leave them lit up in the final game, because it is kind of frustrating if you can’t find them. It adds to the terror, but also the frustration.
In my initial design, light is what would stop her. Now with this effect, I have to let her move around in the light, or you can never see her. So I made a new way now to get rid of her for a short while.
I am going to make more poses, especially for when she gets close to you. I could change the code to only show certain poses when she is closer. The problem with all of the dolls is they are short. If you don’t look down, you can’t see them.
I am doing it all in blueprints. I am a programmer, but the blueprints are fun. I read that blueprints are slower than C++, so maybe in the end I will recode some of it. I haven’t had any performance problems yet.
Blueprints are supposedly around 10x slower than native C++ (though this might have been optimised over the last couple of engine releases, not sure). That said, the actual gameplay logic forms only a very small percentage of the total workload, given that the heavy lifting for rendering, physics, collision detection and so on is all done natively, even if some of the functions are called from blueprints. To be honest, you’d probably struggle to actually notice a significant drop in performance unless you’re doing some seriously complex stuff in blueprints. Personally, if you prefer blueprints, I would stick with them I prefer C++ as I do a lot of programming in my spare time but it’s purely a personal preference rather than any practical benefit over blueprints.
Anyway, I have to say that video is one of the few to really give me a chill. If you need anyone to do playtesting then let me know! Looking forward to more updates.
Just make the AI go into “kill mode” after say… 5 minutes of being in the dark? Or better yet, have it as a difficulty setting.
Also, I would avoid having the dolls do the walking / covering eyes. Sure, have the footsteps and what not sound effects, but make it so that the dolls are sitting down, in a chair, in a corner, on the floor, etc… when the player looks at them. When the dolls attack, then they should of course, be standing / attacking.
@ thanks for all the feedback and taking your time to look at everything. And I am glad you like it.
@SaviorNT When you start the game, you get to walk around the house for about 5 minutes before the dolls start “playing”. During that time, you will see them sitting against the walls and in chairs, etc… They will disappear and switch spots sometimes. You may also see Emily standing, walking or crawling around the house. They wont bother you much, until midnight … Well sometimes they might.
Now she keeps her face hidden until she is on the second to last step to get you! She is working pretty good. I added a few giggles on entrance, tweaked her movement speed, and her angles. She will keep after you for a while, she’s hard to shake. It is also very interesting when mixed with the other dolls. She works in every room in the house, and the basement. Now off to tweak Mr Tatters, the clown.
Thanks TheDiceParadox, I am still working on it! Learning and working on some of the more boring stuff at the moment: saving, loading, the menus, letting the player change the keyboard inputs, video settings, etc…
Emily Wants To Play - Game Menu plus tiny Sneak Peek Gameplay
Game Menu done.
Figured out how to save and load, change video settings, etc…
Here’s that title screen plus a little bit of gameplay:
Now I need to redo the note graphics and the subtitles. Going to change the fonts and try to get them centered on the screen. I am having trouble centering the text when the resolution changes.
Also, I would like to localize the subtitles at least, but I have no idea where to start yet. Need to research that.
If everything goes well, the game should be for sale sometime on December 10th. I ran the final tests last night and I have a solid final build with zero bugs. The game has turned out great. My testers had lots of fun, screaming and laughing for several nights. I hope everyone gets to enjoy the same experience.
If anyone can help get the word out about the game, please do. Tell Friends, family, youtubers, high profile media outlets, etc…! lol
Here are a few articles written about the game this month:
My article on IndieDb about the release (more screenshots)
Thank you to everyone that has been keeping up with Emily Wants To Play’s progress.
Well none of the people I had test the game were able to finish it. They all played for several hours. It takes a while to figure out what it going on. Even when you know what to do, it takes that information, plus some skill to progress.
I released Emily Wants To Play today, it has been an awesome release.
I want to thank you guys that gave feedback here. Thanks a lot for going back and forth with me about weeping angels and the dr who episodes you recommended. It gave me lots of ideas.
It’s crazy I’ve been looking at this since WIP and now its released lol I love the Unreal Community. I’ll probably do a playthrough of it in the near future
I prefer C++ as I do a lot of programming in my spare time but it’s purely a personal preference rather than any practical benefit over blueprints.
