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[Araph]

Medieval Ghostbusters is the working title of a survival horror game, created in Unity (...and Maya, Mudbox, Blender, xNormal, and Photoshop). I used a few of the free assets that Unity provides, but nearly everything in the game was programmed/modeled/textured by me from scratch.

The Basics
The general idea of the game is that the players (probably around five or six on a server at once) are split into two sides: a single player is the monster and all the others are the monster-hunters-of-sorts who have to destroy evil altars scattered across each map. When an altar is destroyed, the monster 'dies' and respawns as a different type of monster, with different abilities and weaknesses.

What the Players Do
On their own, the protagonists have no way to kill the monster. They can use magic to repel it for a short time, and some monsters have other weaknesses that the protagonists can exploit, but for the most part the protagonists are helpless.

The monster, on the other hand, can attack the protagonists without any aid. Each attack lowers the protagonist's sanity, which triggers various hallucinations. When a protagonist falls below a certain sanity threshold, they die horribly.

Magic
The protagonists have a small, but regenerating, pool of mana. They can use it to create a (very) short-lived shield that repels monsters, or to strip away glamers and illusions.

Hallucinations
Hallucinations are (or rather, will be) a key mechanic. As protagonists are driven more and more insane by the monster, they begin to see visions from the past, which elaborate on each map's backstory. They'll see NPCs who were killed off by the monster before the protagonists ever set foot on the map, and, as the players approach death, they'll receive hints as to the locations of the altars through the hallucinations.

Other times, however, the hallucinations may just be disorienting and scary.

Winning Conditions
Each match is over when one of two criteria is met:
1. The protagonists destroy all the altars on the map, or...
2. The monster kills all the protagonists.


List of Features Necessary for the Pre-Alpha Demo

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

-Menus
--Main menu
--Server creation/connecting
---Server lobby (map selection, monster selection, player list)

-Basic Controls
--WASD controls
--Sprinting/limited stamina
--Shield/limited mana
--Environmental interactions
---Lighting candles
---Opening/closing doors
---Travelling through passages
---Destroying altars
--Player interactions
---Attacking protagonists
---Killing monsters (via altar destruction)

-Networking
--Starting and connecting to servers
--Server controls
---Host sets map and decides who plays as the monster
--Synchronizing across clients
---Created objects
---Movement
---Interactions (destroyed altars, moved doors, etc.)

-Hallucinations
--Triggered upon entrance into relevant area
--Varied depending upon level of insanity
--Non-repeating

-Victory and death
--Dead players get to watch through another player's camera
--Monsters respawn when altars are destroyed
---No repeated monster types
--Protagonists win once all altars are destroyed
--Monster wins when all protagonists are dead

-Graphics (They kinda suck, but they work)
--Environmental props
---Models
---Particle effects (dust, fog, fire)
--Character props
---Models
---Animations

-Sounds
--Environmental sounds
---Doors
---Wind
---Fire
--Music
--Player sounds
---Footsteps
---Breathing

-BUGFIXING

There's still a ton left to do, but it's actually starting to look manageable now. I'm making this thread as a place for me to ramble about programming and animation and whatnot, as well as to receive feedback before testing starts.

Ideally, I'll hold pre-alpha testing here at B12 once I've gone through and fixed all the obvious bugs.

Spoiler: Screenshots (click to show/hide)

[Araph]

Spoiler: I Made a Rock (click to show/hide)

I Got Made a Rock

A few days ago I had a big step forward, graphically speaking. After BSing my way through most of the demo level's stuff with simple models and Photoshop, I decided I would try creating graphics the real* way: sculpting and normal mapping like a professional.

*Not actually the only valid way.



I started with a very blocky blob in Maya. Sending the scene to Mudbox, I derped my way through sculpting it into an actual rock with my little tablet and pen.



Now it actually looks like something! Of course, it had been subdivided to the point where it had basically a bajillion polygons. It'd be useless to try and put it into a game in its current state. The next step was to send it back into Maya and redraw a low-poly mesh over the detailed one.



When put into Unity, the new mesh gives us this amorphous piece of refuse. Now that it doesn't look anything like what it's supposed to, we take both the high-poly mesh and the low-poly mesh and stick them into a program called xNormal, which can render normal maps from the high-poly object to the low-poly one. In the end, the normal maps looked like this:



When we put normal maps onto the object in Unity, we end up with something that looks significantly more rock-like that before.



Finally, we go into Photoshop and whip up an unbelievably shitty rock texture to slap over the mesh.



You can see the UV seams (the lines across the rock where the textures don't line up properly). This is the fault of my own haste; when I unwrapped the UVs for the rock, I basically tore them apart with no logic behind it instead of putting the seams where you wouldn't notice them (i.e. the bottom of the rock).

I don't know if anybody finds these sort of ramblings interesting/useful, but here's a not-quite-tutorial walkthrough-ish thing about graphics. If anybody's interested, I can dig up some links to actual tutorials that helped me learn how to do this.

[GiglameshDespair]

Well, I'd help playtest it for you. 

[Araph]

Well, I'd help playtest it for you. 

Much obliged!

Spoiler: Also, progress (click to show/hide)

Because I'm stupid, I decided it'd be a good idea to jump from sculpting something simple (a rock) to sculpting a human. There are a few problems with the normals on one side of the face and both hands, but for the most part it turned out alright!

[Doomblade187]

Well, I'd help playtest it for you. 

Much obliged!

Spoiler: Also, progress (click to show/hide)

Because I'm stupid, I decided it'd be a good idea to jump from sculpting something simple (a rock) to sculpting a human. There are a few problems with the normals on one side of the face and both hands, but for the most part it turned out alright!

Nice! Yeah, this looks really interesting.

And yes, of course I would be willing to playtest.

[Araph]

Nice! Yeah, this looks really interesting.

And yes, of course I would be willing to playtest.

Thanks!

Spoiler: I think I may have made a mistake when rigging this guy (click to show/hide)

Just a hunch.

Fortunately, I've found the problem with that arm. I'm going to have to re-rig the whole thing, but at least I learned the lesson before moving on to a more polished model.


In the meantime, let's talk about Doors.

I spent somewhere around three weeks getting doors to work in this game. In the past, I'd used a simple click-once-to-open-or-close mechanic, but that didn't feel like it'd work here. After all, you can hardly crack the door open, see the monster moving in the next room, and slam the door closed again while screaming shrilly into your mic with doors like that.

So, doors needed gradual movement. They also needed to swing naturally when you let go of them, and move when you walk into them if they're not tightly closed. I went through a bunch of ideas to get all that to work, but in the end (i.e. now) they became rigid bodies on hinge joints.



When held by a player, their velocity is determined using the difference between the door's current angle and a target angle, which is changed by moving the mouse. This makes it so the door moves fast if the difference is large, but slow if the player is moving the mouse slowly. It also means that the target angle can be synced across all the other clients and the door's script will automatically move it correctly. When the door is released from a character's grasp, it swings naturally to a halt because Unity recognizes it as a rigidbody, which also allows players to physically push doors open or closed by walking into them.

When the door swings shut, however, it's marked as kinematic (translation: you can't push it around any more). You can still open the door with the 'interact' key, but walking into it won't move it.

The speed at which the door's moving also changes the volume of its creaking hinges. If you're sprinting to and fro across the map, odds are the monster is going to hear you from a long ways away.


tl;dr: Doors were a pain to make. If you ever make a game, do what Skyrim did and have them swing open and closed with an animation instead of physics.

[GiglameshDespair]

Amnesia style doors are quite important n horror games, i would imagine. Opening them quietly if you do it slow is quite a nice touch.

[Iceblaster]

As long as it isn't Slender like(Jump scares pretty much, hate it) I'm game for playing when we get enough for a full server

[Araph]

As long as it isn't Slender like(Jump scares pretty much, hate it) I'm game for playing when we get enough for a full server

I admit, when considering game concepts I was very tempted to make 'Jump Scares: The Game', followed by a sequel called 'Jump Scares 2: The Jumpening'. Regrettably, I failed to follow through on that idea and somebody is likely already after that particular IP.

While there will no doubt be an element of jump scares in Medieval Ghostbusters, the final version is supposed to be more about paranoia and discovering the story behind each map than about jump scares.


Progress Update:
Animations are working with the protagonist's model. The animations are bad, but I'm not particularly concerned given the early stage the game is in. I fully expect to eventually have to remake the player models and animations several times, so there will be improvement after this first round of testing. Next up is win conditions, death, and more bugfixing. Always moar bugfixing.

[My Name is Immaterial]

This gets a big old PTW. I'll help play test.

[coolio678]

I'm excited to see where this game goes! Keep up the good work.

[Araph]

As of now, servers track dead players and destroyed altars. When all of the former are dead or all of the latter are destroyed, everyone anticlimactically goes back to the server menu. This means that games now have winning and losing implemented, which was the last thing strictly necessary for it to be playable.

Ladies and gentlemen, Medieval Ghostbusters is now officially a game.

[dennislp3]

Interesting...ptw (and test if I get the time)

[wierd]

The setting doesn't seem right.

Medieval period would be more "church envoy, sent to exorcise the daemons", and less in line with the eldritch abomination theme intended here I think.

This seems more in line with the "fad fascination with the occult" seen between the 17th and 19th centuries. That is more late edwardian and victorian era.

/nitpick

I am quite good at making solid models of architectural and technological objects. (But not so good at making organic objects like trees, or irregular objects like striated stone boulders.)

I could drop some CC uninhibited licensed things if you can give a short list.

[Araph]

The setting doesn't seem right.

Medieval period would be more "church envoy, sent to exorcise the daemons", and less in line with the eldritch abomination theme intended here I think.

Who said this was set in Europe? The game world is entirely self-contained.

And I appreciate the offer of models, but I think I can handle the graphics. I really need more practice at that sort of thing.