Since my last project got canned I’ve been looking for a new project, looked into vehicles… they are buggy in the engine at the moment… so skipped that.
So inspired by the awesome “Sing me to sleep” WIP here in this forum I decided to for a survival game with something of the same visual clues.
I’m nowhere near that level though, all props to acatalept for his unique visuals, truly awesome work.
See it here:
Anyway, on to my progress;
I have so far made the first steps into an inventory system. You can pick up items and place them back into the world. Also, the harvesting of resources has been started, I am already able to cut down a tree and collect the resources from that, so progress has been made on the gameplay front.
As for the** visual side**, I’m slowly moving forward:
The gameplay idea is… well, survival.
You are somewhere for some reason and need to survive. You are relatively safe when you are not in the fog. Only real enemies out of the fog will be hunger and cold. To fight those enemies though, you have to venture into the fog… the fog hides the wood you need to burn and the food you need to eat.
So plan carefully when you go into the fog, bring light and a weapon. And make sure you can find your way back up to your camp, you won’t survive the cold night without shelter.
Further progress should come steadily. When the harvesting and inventory are , videos of those will be uploaded.
Pardon the artwork, I’m not that strong in Blender
This looks rather interesting. I’m loving the styling of the trees, very eerie! Have you seen The Mist (film). If not, watch it, if you have, watch it again - lots of tips in there for creating suspense and fear from what you cannot see (also see Silent Hill 1). Nothing is more terrifying than what your own imagination perceives from strange noises coming from the fog, hiding in the mist!
The Mist was pretty low budget i suppose , but it still got nice suspense and the ending was interesting
Anyway i like the cartoony style of the trees in this scene , i would suggest put the fog intensity a bit down .
I’ve tweaked the fog some more, and changed the angle of the sun, it gives a bit more visibility.
But the fog for now is very far from how I want it. It doesn’t react to light the way I want, I want it to take the colour of whatever light shines on it, and that might be a challenge… since neither of the options for fog does this, so I’ll probably have to do it as a shaders… and I know nothing of that
About the art style. I like it too, kinda. And it has actually changed my idea for the game.
When starting I wanted to do something that was real yet eerie. That has changed, it’s now going to be more strange and let go of reality because… well, I can’t do ‘real’ models, only cartoon. And by doing strange, materials that look strange is suddenly an option, and that puts less pressure on my patience and skill and frees me to do more fun stuff, like actual gameplay.
I’ll have an update later today, showing off more awesome art. And maybe a video, if I can be bothered to make one
IMHO - abstraction in games is what we need more of. If you’re going for hyper-real, you really have to make sure that EVERYTHING is convincing and very realistic. This can be a challenge for indies as it just requires so much time, and/or a massive team. Super Mario 64, Zelda Windwaker - this is what i’m talking about.
I agree wholeheartedly! Especially with making everything realistic part, it’s just not possible and when the player notices it - it just ruins the experience.
A small hut… I spent too much time playing with collision on this one… ended up skipping a simple collision mesh and just went with “Use complex collision as simple”. For some reason, I can’t get collision right when exporting from blender.
As promised, here is a video of the harvesting and looting I have .
=KV8B08BeXsE
Pardon the framerate and cropping, it is recorded with VLC, and couldn’t be bothered to go full screen.
I suggest making everything white. Like an origami world, a paper nightmare - make it surreal and clinical, yet when the night comes - it gets dark, creepy, and with everything looking the same (texture wise) will add to the “OMG, i’m lost!” feeling - people will really have to pay attention to the geometry, tree and hut layouts and other landmarks to guide them.
untextured or lightly textured looks like it would stick with the first couple screenshots well, and the minimalism approach lends itself to atmospheric games if well. As a rule, though, there’s no reason for the trees to be untextured if the hut is, or vice versa.
I have been standing still because I got frustrated with doing stuff in blender. So:
I ditched my own art. Going to go with what I can find in the examples. I have been spending too much time doing “art” instead of doing the fun stuff.
So today I made a new map added 3 points of interest and made a particle effect just to learn that stuff.
Next is to change the fog. The exponential height fog looks bland, so I’ll be adding some horisontal fog sheets instead. This way I can also get some movement in the fog.
That shot right there The less you see, the more you fear. Nothing is as unsettling as what the player’s mind can conjure out of the fog.
This could really be effective coupled with some careful sound design: sounds in the environment that are hard to define (was that an animal? the wind? my own blood pounding in my ears?), and/or hard to tell where they’re coming from (that shape in the fog ahead, or just behind me?).
This is a very late reply, but I only stumbled upon this today because you happened to mention my name (thanks for the kind words ;). I hope you’re still working on it! Good luck!
The less you see, the more you fear. Nothing is as unsettling as what the player’s mind can conjure out of the fog.