Feaocder

I finished a little horror, survival game (without shooting for now).
I would love to upload a little demo with screenshots, but I forgot my computer at a friend of mine and have to wait a few days... As soon as I get my computer back, I will upload everything I just mentioned.
However, I was just wondering how/were I could upload my game/s.
Is it passable to present 3dgs games on steam or similar? Are there any options like the "assents store" of Unity3d, were you can sell (or share) projects, games?

Finnaly, my computer is back ^^

Let me present, Feaocder!

You will have to collect the code for a passable escape door.
While you are doing that, a horrible ghost follows you...









DELETED (new Version)

I've found some bugs, f.e. I get stuck at some places (probably the enemy, cause it looks like I faced something and can't walk throw it). Plus I got some error message (forgot what was written it it), something related to .fx file popped up. Otherways, looks nice, but still needs some improvements, more RANDOM sounds and a flashlight!

I just fixed the problem with the error message.
It is on purpose that there is no flashlight ^^

more Random sounds, ok.

PS: Did the ghost catch you? ^^

Incredibly dark !
Empty as hell , one texture on ground, some wall ?
Nothing to see !
(I don't like indie dark empty games, it isn't just my taste )

Good luck !

Well, it is actually that dark to make the level feel bigger.
The level is to empty? Let me see what I can do ^^

Ghost didn't had a chance to catch me May be one of the reasons that I got bored, you need to work more on game play, but not visuals mate Forget about empty levels for now, concentrate on gameplay mechanics. Good luck

What was the scariest thing that happend in my game?

When I heard that monster sound But when it's too repetitive it loses its effect.

Awesome:
- Atmosphere! The scariest moment was when I heard the heartbeat getting louder, the ghost screaming, and when I turned around it suddenly was there!

Not so awesome:
- Sound. Too repetitive.
- Movement. I always run because walking is too slow. And I sometimes get stuck somewhere.
- Camera. Seemed to me like having a too small arc.
- Darkness. Okay if you want it dark, but at least leave me a glimpse of where I have to go. I was mostly running around in complete blacknes just to stumble randomly over notes. And if I have no flashlight, why do I "glow"?

What would interest me:
When you open the fence it says "too loud". Does it attract the ghost?

Leave the level, it's ok for now. Game mechanics are more important and they have potential.

Ok ok, I need a flashlight ^^
-yes, the sound really is to repetitive. I have to do it more "random"
-Thanks for telling me, now I to notice, that you get stuck sometimes..
And the movement is met to be slow, it animates to to run and running (just like every sound) attracts the ghost
-I know, the sound of the fence is quite loud, so that it attracts the ghost

Thank you!

Now the ghost is a lot harder:

Feaocer video

i find the monster voice sound too much "video game" touch, specially in the end :
"Wrororoorrrooooor Arrarrrrrhhhhhh"
No sound atmosphear like wind or hell screams in background from time to time ?

Textures are grey everywhere, and un detailled for some FPS game.

Keep the hard work

Wind and hell screems...
You just brought me to some ideas.

Of couse I will ^^

look at some videos of Doom 3 to be inspired.
Palying this game in complete dark with headphones was scarry as hell !
Atmosphear, scarry monsters and their sounds, voices etc ...
A really scary game that can inspire you.
One factor was that you didn't have time , and must go fast when ennemies was near for example, some of them they didn't put hours to reach your position : this was some stressing factor also !

New Demo (with flashlight).
Now:
More spezial effects, more shocks and a lot harder challenge.

Feaocder Demo

Now I have added alot more effects (shocks etc...), but still I am looking for some kind of scary tough.
What do you think is very scary?

PS: Lately I can barley sleep, because of my game and research...

About the game, I would like to advice you to give player about 3-5 minutes of free play, I mean without that "monster", cause otherways, it's too short, you are getting killed as soon as you start moving around. Plus, use simple perpixel shader, PM if you need one, that probably will make spotlight looks a bit better.

perpixel shader for my level geometry? Wouldn`t that kill to much FPS?

nope, it isn't that slow to kill much fps

"3run is over their Private Topic limit."
Well I can`t send you a PM 3run. Could you send me a simple perpixel shader that does not kill the FPS?

Kartoffel promised to make one for me, I'll share it with you. As the one which I currently use, doesn't work with spotlights, only point ones.

Perfectiko

Here you go:
Spotlight vs. Dynamic light
Give this man a credit, he is awesome!

How do you like my new ghost?

Anything in action? It's too early to say, do we like him or not

haha.
I am sure you will hate him
The script is finished, but first he must be animated

He is going to be a little bit like the ghost here (from fantal frame) (See ghost at 5:30 min)
Ghost

But I have some great surprises in the way how ghosts (yes not only one ) appear... muhahaha...

Too much basic character , you haven't put lot of work on it !
you just taken some model we can find anywhere even with MakeHuman program, and just extended the arms ...

It's too easy, you should put closes, accessories and make the ghost lot more "GHOST".

The best tool when you do design is : GOOGLE IMAGE SEARCH !
Some quick example :
a ghost in some MMO



You will have to put lot more work and personnal touches on your characters to make some good appealing game.

And it seems too much heavy on polygons ... have you some wireframe screenshot or the count of polygons ?

Keep progressing !

Clothes... I really can`t make clothes. I will try to make an creature, ghost out of him/it.

PS:
Is there a way to attach an spotlight image to a spotlight?
Like this one?

There is no way to attach an image to a dynamic spotlight, you are talking about projection texture, take a look at the grafton examples (AUM 71).

ratchet@ why don't you help him out with that REAL "ghost in cloth" thing?

Well, i see, he's a programmer not a 3D artist at all.
I should recommand , making a team with some modeler, it will be lot more easy for him if he targets a good quality game.

for prototype , he can use anything (even cubes !)

------------------

It's not the subject here , but let's talk about helping on projects :

- I helped some creature monster of very good quality for some great 3DGS game that had a great level and characters. I've put hours and hours of work, and the prject failed one or two months after
-Same thing i put lot of hours creating some animated character for some arcade project ,and the project have been abandonned for another game type.

Help for free : it's ok, when you begin 3D, but once you are skilled a little and want to make a game, you'll keep free time for your project instead

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I'm too much really busy in my game, i can't even find a ll the free time i would want to put on it !

I really recommend him to make some two guys team : programmer, 3D artist.
And you can find amateur 3D artists on 3D forums elsewhere than in 3DGS forums

Feaocder 0.9

The newest version of Feaocder (0.9).
My game is the scariest game you will ever play ^^.

PS:
I need an animator for my ghost (run, stand, attack anm) and somebody who could help me with my flashlight.

Greetings

Play my new demo

gameplay video of Feaocder (v 0.9)

Looks pretty solid. You can simply improve your flashlight (and general lighting) with lower the tesselation size in the map compiler. Also please change the step sounds

but the game looks promising, very scary!

You mean:

tesselation shaded, flat and turbulence?

yes, exactly
but i think you only need shaded surfaces tesselated

I created my own little flashlight script.
However There are still some areas which just stay black...



Any suggestions how to make it work properly?

PS: thank you masterQ32. It does work better now, but still not properly.

why don't you use the flag SPOTLIGHT?

I have improved quite alot.
Take a look at the first room of Feaocder 1.0.
A short video will follow.







[img]http://imageshack.us/a/img35/1250/shot0s.jpg[/img]

Youtube Video

My thoughts:
You look like you prefer coding, so I suggest you try to nail the gameplay first. Use very simple models and levels for prototyping or download them somewhere for free. Don't try to make the game beautiful with fancy shaders or the like, try to make it fun or interesting first.
I would even suggest that you don't use any spec/ normal mapping at all because it always looks like garbage in all indie games and even some big budget titles. Normal maps are fine and sometimes (!) useful and necessary if they are created from high poly models, otherwise they mostly look really bad and give the game a bad and non-unique nor interesting look.
If you have your gameplay ready you can try to create the appropriate atmosphere (not with normal maps) and experiment with an own style. You should try to find one that allows the rather rapid generation of content and don't try to emulate any style/ artstyle that you've seen from big studio.

That is a great tip, thank you!

I actually have two questions:
1) What the hell does Feaocder mean?
2) How is it pronounced?

I though the game was called Fearcoder until I read your question. Thanks for confusing me Sid...

Well.
Feaocder is a mixture between "Fear" and "Code" (Feaocder).
My first thought was "Fearcode" but since the word Feaocder does not exists, my game would be alot easier to find (Google Feaocder ) ^^

And the meaning of Feaocder (the word I invented) is to be scared of what you need to reach a goal.
This is explained witch, I use priming (flashing images that appear for about a millisecond) in my game to (try to) control emotions of the player. My goal is it to make the player fear the necessary tools (collecting codes) which he needs to reach his goal (finish the game).
That is the meaning of Feaocder.

It is pronounced german:

Feaocder
Fea - oc -der

Deutsch: Fi - os - der
English: Fe - os - dar

How should it be possible to display something shorter than the actual screen refresh-rate? (usually ~16.7ms)

^^

Don't get me wrong, the idea itself is great, but I have my doubts that this will really work.

Truly speaking, I can't say that idea is really great (I'm not meant to offend anyone here), as I don't see anything new in it to call it great. For me, this is just another copy of the shitty "slender" game (unity fans, where are you?), where you need to collect pages in the forest, hospital, prison, labyrinth, school (or fuckever you are). I can't say that the game itself bad (I'm talking about Feaocder now), it's pretty good to start from, as it's still WIP and I guess Random has putted in it a lot of his time and so on, but I wouldn't call the idea behind it great. I can't say that it scared me either (but this is just me.. I never played a scared game yet, but interesting ones instead, without collecting pages/codes/whatever), just walked around in the first versions of it, and couldn't play it longer than 3-5 minutes.

Random@ don't stop the gameplay mechanics on the collection shit stuff.. there are too many "slender" kind of games, where you are stalked by some shitty thing, and trying to scare player by playing loud sounds as soon as you've seen it. Try to tell a small story maybe, or create a new mechanics (this will be harder of course), but please don't think that making those two things I've mentioned above (collect & loud sounds) will make your game enjoyable.. Go on with the ides and gameplay!! Good luck with it so far and I'm waiting for the revenge from your side, as there are too many "unity" horror games already out there

@3run
I was actually talking about the priming idea

But I agree with you. There weren't a lot good horror games in the past few years.
But there were a LOT like 'go there, read this note, push that button, find the key'-games with so many bad and pointless jump scares... just awful.

Kartoffel@ actually I got your point, but post above wasn't addressed to you, or to the idea with showing a picture in about millisecond, while the frame is about 16.7ms

Game idea:
You play a ghost/ demon and have to run from human beings with flashlights (you can see their cones) and you can only kill them from behind/ if they don't see you, this should be suspenseful enough if done right. To reduce the amount of work that goes into level design you could build a 2/3 floors high mansion where the ghost/ demon lives in and wave after wave more people (that want to see/ hunt/ kill the demon) enter the building from different doors and windows.

Almost.
You have a rechargeable flashlight.
If a monster sees you, you will be warned with specific noises. As soon that happens, you have to find and see the monster before he sees you. You will have to use your flashlight to distract the monster (Alan Wake) before it kills you. If you do it will disappear for the moment ^^
So you will have to become the hunter instead of the hunted
I also added alot of new little futures like blinking eyes
As soon I finished my level, I will upload a demo as usual.

PS: Priming is new in my game and it works. You will soon see for yourself.

I decided to simple buy "levels" from DEXSOFT (great models by the way).

I have created my own sneak system:

# The visibility of a character depends on many factors.
-light (if the character is in the light or not)
-stance (if the character is standing/ducking, moving or not)
-camouflage (if the character is inside of any plants etc.)

# Noise is also a very imported factor.
-AI turns and walks (if the noise is to loud or is repeated to often at a time)
-Steps and physical objects like boxes and cans make noise (yes you can pick up stuff and throw them to confuse AI)
-different step sounds on different ground typ (also influences the volume of created noises)


However I was asking myself if somebody is interested in a little demo of my sneaking system?
I personally think it works pretty well.

Greetings.

DEMOnstrate what you got so far

Ok, I am making a little demo at this moment.

sneak system demo 1 (needs some improvement, but it is getting there)





Contolls:

W/S/A/D = walking (makes noise)
holding shift = running (very noisy, you have condition)
holding ctrl = ducking/crawling (very quite)
hold mouse left to pick up objects
press mouse right to throw objects while holding them

stay out of the light and try to stay inside plants.

DEMO