The Horror Project | Dev Diary

Community Showcase Game Development
1

Aloha Unreal Community,

I’ve recently started a solo project, code-named “The Horror Project”. I decided that I’d keep a detailed diary of it’s progress so you all can see what’s going on with it and follow along if you’d like.

I’m not looking for any additional members at this time, this is just a personal project. Although, as things progress, I may end up asking for some assistance or open the project up for other interested parties to join the team.

Genres
Main: Survival/Horror
***Sub-Genre: ***Paranormal Mystery

In One Sentence
Think Mystery Inc (Scooby-Doo), with more mature content and suspense.

Overview
You’re part of a skeptic paranormal investigation team that goes in to debunk the most haunted placed around the world.

Where does the game take place?
Each game in the series will focus on a single location (fictional, but based on real haunted locations).

The first game will focus on the Crescent Hotel. This grand Victorian hotel, built in 1886 is one of the most haunted hotels in America.

Targeted Platform
PC (if first release goes well, maybe PS4/XBox One)

Current Progress:

  • First pass level blocking is 75% complete.
  • Main Character has been created and animated for most basic functionality.
  • Object interaction is currently being worked on. Object pulling animation + interaction is complete (see animated GIF below).

Pulling Object Interaction Sample:

https://docs.google.com/uc?id=0B2D_iSIrOpwAOWlaNFNkeFBuRXM

Finished Characters

[table=“width: 500, class: outer_border, align: left”]

Nolan (Main Playable Character)
Daryl
    Lyalia
Anna

https://docs.google.com/uc?id=0B2D_iSIrOpwAVDVoWkV4U2JEZ3M

https://docs.google.com/uc?id=0B2D_iSIrOpwANE1DaE9scjYyaEU

https://docs.google.com/uc?id=0B2D_iSIrOpwAWnRlSkhWMFVJUk0

    Character Coming Soon

More to come…

2

Updated original post with correct, public links to images and gif animation. Apologies…

3

Got a major shader update today, when I got my thermal imaging shader working in 4.13.

My implementation of it makes it very easy to target any object and/or material without interfering with current objects material network. It’s fast, efficient and looks great. I gotta tweak it a bit more, but so far I’m happy with the results. Enjoy!

4

Today’s Update: Completed test equip/unequip of the thermal scanner object. Will be working on a zoom-into the thermal camera I think instead of unbound thermal post process shader. Haven’t decided yet. See below for the updated gif:

5

I love that individuals put the effort into working on projects like this! The nutshell description is GREAT! Scooby-doo game sounds wonderful! I can’t wait to see how this progresses!

Good Luck dude

6

:cool:

Aloha CupMcCakers,

Your comment is greatly appreciated! I’m trying to take it one step at a time and see how far I can go. Since it’s a solo project, I’ve found myself stuck in a few things that may take me much longer to accomplish than if I had a good team, but it’s pushing me to learn things outside of my comfort zone (mostly on the art side). Facial animations has been a huge thorn in my side, but I’ve been chugging away at that for about a week now - all I’ve gotten out of it was how not to do things haha. Got the characters set up to do the facial animations, but since I don’t have a ton of money or a mocap studio at my disposal, I have to either scrap the idea of having good cinematics with the facial animations during interactions between the characters or figure out something else to accomplish it. It’s easy enough to be able to get them talking without moving their mouths, but it’s not the level of realism I’m trying to go for :slight_smile:

At any rate, now that I’ve vented, I’ve gotta get back at it so I can keep providing updates to this dev diary for you all :smiley:

7

Monster Bust #1 Concept:

characterbust_01.jpg
characterbust_01.jpg483×599 101 KB

8

Working on a backpack model so the character doesn’t grab items out of a random invisible back from behind their back lol

c86756f01e1c9640f9a2e7b61636c523665a4d6f.jpeg

9

Made some progress on the backpack. Not too shabby for a programmer :stuck_out_tongue:

TheHorrorProject_BackpackUpdateScreenshot.jpg
TheHorrorProject_BackpackUpdateScreenshot.jpg483×599 78.1 KB

10

Pretty much finished backpack other than unwrapping the UV’s and texturing it. But got excited and decided to attach it to my character and see how well it works. Main character is now pulling from and putting objects into, rather than the infamous, invisible backpack lol pretty stoked on the results! Check them out below:

https://drive.google.com/uc?id=0B2D_iSIrOpwAUVQyMVZKaG1nNFk

11

Told my 7 year old son to draw a picture to put on the patch of the backpack. Love game dev! :slight_smile:

35e7f5ed2d5bab4795d9f0da6de78182b3cdbab7.jpeg

12

Really cool stuff! Games looks great!
FYI I’m new to the Unreal Community and am a 3D Modeling Artist with about 12 years experience looking to join a project.
Please let me kmow if you’re interested. This is like the exact type of game I want to help develop.

Thanks,

13

Any chance you could do a tutorial on how you achieved this? probably the best ive seen so far and the previous methods which have been described no longer work with 4.13 :frowning:

(thermal vision)