The original concept

On 18-06-2008 i posted a game idea i was working on for a competition that required the game designer to come up with a new mechanic for death. To use death as a game mechanic. I decided on the concept of a doctor who goes around scaring patients to death, where the death aspect of his career was his achievement.

Over time, i have refined this idea a million times in my head and i have twirled the story and concept so many times and came up with some pretty ridiculous stuff. For example, each patient is procedurally generated and includes a handful of irrational fears that you can play on. Sometimes the fears are real world phobia's and sometimes they are a fear of burnt pizza. The idea is that you can influence the level of horror in patiences by carefully planning around things.

Leave a radio with sounds of [insert an irrational fear] in the cupboard, whip out a giant chainsaw for dramatic effect. You know. Scary stuff.

You can even group patients, take all the emo patients and put them in the far corner alone. They are bound to get more scared just because they are together.

 

What happened to it?

I got distracted, sidetracked, over scoped etc etc. The point was i never finished it (in fact i had game play, it was just never playable). Now that i have learned so much from working in game development full time, working on projects all over the place - I am on a completion rampage. There are a handful of my smaller games chasing me down, and this is why i am posting.

The 2010 Version

Having scoped the game play differently (it may or may not be bigger scope, but a lot of the mechanics are the same), I am back to implementing the game mechanics first, and then implementing the rest if it is worth it. The major changes are obviously visual to the readers at this point - But there is a lot of cool stuff that i am working on.

I am currently implementing the mechanics and game play using my own Laboratory ( read what that is here ). I have also decided to rework the level and game art, because i have never really approached an isometric pixel art project before (i have only messed around while making a room for The joint).

I love pixel art but i also really love painting and lighting (see this). As with the original version of this game, i will be mixing the two. Below you can see a rough style test to see if i like the direction and so far I am not displeased.

 

Click the image to see a full scale version in a new tab.

So what am i saying?

Hold me to release this as a fully playable prototype. Once that is done, i move on.

I appreciate badgering, mailing, and general harassment to remind me that i need to finish things. I am saying this here so that i can always look back at my posts and hold myself to it as well.

Thanks for reading!

 

What's new code side After spending a bit of time rethinking things for this multi UI experience i was testing and implementing a whole bunch of core code. I rewrote a good number of things that i wasn't happy with and i was implementing things in a more detached manner. Once i had that all done i dug into splitting out my hacked up test code into a proper abstracted interface, i got to testing my first interface with my current interface. The test was here, could i have the console (debug window) based javascript shell running at the exact same time as the visual shell, AND, have them using the same core module? Can i tell the core i need a login, and the visual interface responds as well? All things considered i managed to achieve this and more over a few hours thanks to boost, and Jon Parrot (the anti-brain-mess filter i run sometimes). [caption id="attachment_110" align="aligncenter" width="450" caption="Typing in console while the main UI runs asynchronous"] [/caption] Blog theme While you may have noticed by now, i have updated the theme of my blog to something legible. Thanks for all the feedback and views on the last one, and as i continue to make this one better comments are always welcome. Again, the awesome image in the background is from an awesome friend, Paul - Link .Fin

Meh, trying too hard to redo the same image, with more detail. Got bored so im gonna do something completely different instead. [caption id="attachment_110" align="aligncenter" width="450" caption="ignore this one"] [/caption]

Some concept art iv been messing around with. [caption id="attachment_110" align="aligncenter" width="450" caption="no candy here"] [/caption]

As an increasing effort to post more often, i will update with more screenshots and progress on all fronts that i work on. For now, implementing the demo of shadowracer into Torque3D. The screenshots are intentionally ugly and washed out ;) [caption id="attachment_110" align="aligncenter" width="958" caption="no candy here"] [/caption]

As i mentioned, things were on hold. As i have now the things needed in my bag'o'tricks i will be reimplementing the game play over the next short while, and ill have a nicely polished video to display as well. [caption id="attachment_110" align="aligncenter" width="766" caption="no candy here"] [/caption] Cant wait.

So while we were finalising the demo, we have been working really hard on getting a cool style into the game, and coming up with the coolest possible look we can for this game, while keeping it in a sane time-frame, and a plausible scale, while still challenging other games graphically as well. This post will explain a little more of the art direction up until the "playable version" which will be ready soon (thanks to having an amazing artist helping me out). Ill carry on where the last post left off, the 3 cities merging and joining etc as a proof of concept. While this looks pretty cool to make as a city perhaps, its totally crazy to do it fast. So, instead i came up with a much simpler, one track layout instead. Thinking about it, the outer edges of the city need not be seen, all that often in the demo. so putting up stuff to pretend made no real sense. I then refined my idea and went around with something like this : I took the map into the game "context" and had a look at it so far and realised theres quite a lot you can do with quite a little in the kind of game i am making. the workflow was really fast and simple too so this seemed like a nice direction to move in. Below you can see that the above box city, can still look quite cool in game. So, now i had something to work towards and somewhere to look at for ideas, and i now also had someone with a really cool eye for art, step up to help me along with art direction. We made a couple of style tests along the way to see what can come of it, and did some painting around the current renders we could generate in a matter of seconds in the box city. The first and second one i did and the others below that are from renier, the actual artist ;p The second one of mine is clearly inspired by his style test, in terms of style. When trying to find a good starting point for the style in a game theres plenty to keep in mind. Renier's : This progressed further, to an even cooler idea renier had. I wont say much as to where we are headed but the pictures are pretty cool to look at either way :D So while testing, the world has changed quite drastically, going from the top image to the below image relatively quickly. The difference is startling :P While the dark style looks really awesome, i must say i do prefer the white actually. There might be a combination of many, but again, images speak loud enough. This weekend at rage, and the week before iv had invaluable gameplay feedback from many many people. Certain things are going to be coming around and , i am really really excited about this project, seeing it grow has been awesome seeing as i only do it in my spare time and work full time making games at work. I will keep the blog updated, so bookmark this page for any news on the game and its releases.