Reality Factory

Ok after reading Pickles e-book (excellent) I've realised some major mistakes I have made in my previous projects.

So I've decided to start a new project by the numbers which isn't meant to be anything special other than a properly assemled, and created game.

Hopefully this will prove to speed up my developement 10 fold as I think it will because everything already seems much simpler now. Plus gameplay elements from this can later be moved to Titan-IC.

So here's the basic story summary so far which may not be historically accurate or anything but who cares it's a game right?

It's the year 2006 when taking a vacation through the German countryside an American tourists' scooter breaks down in the middle of nowhere. A storm looms overhead as the sky begins to rumble he runs into the woods seeking shelter from the storm.

As the rain pours down, and he huddles freezing and wet under a tree lightning flashes and he catches the silhouette of a building further into the woods.

Moving towards it he discovers what appears to be a old small WWII pillbox. So he forces the rusty door open, and rushes inside out of the storm.

The storm still booming outside, he huddles in the corner trying to get warm. Then he hears something...something strange coming from underneath the pillbox floor it seems. Looking around he uncovers a heavy concrete trap door. Curiosity overtakes him as he pry's it up revealing a dimly lit room with old WWII crates, and an old steel ladder leading down.

Heading down to see what hidden treasures he's found the ladder old and rusty suddenly breaks loose sending him crashing to the floor, and trapped within...The Bunker!

From there it's a matter of survival, and escape. As the bodies of the dead soldiers burried within come to life, and try to kill the invader.
So I think that makes for a neat little project. It's go undead Nazi soldiers, and will have old WWII weapons (gotta love the classic's) will be very maze like, and spooky, and will have a mystery as to why they were buried down there in the first place, and whats making them come back to life.

Sort of like a Doom meets WWII meets Resident Evil in the first person. So it has begun and hopefully if I lay it all out right things should go smoothly, and hey it might even be fun to play too

But like I said it's really more of a developement process learning project. I already have some WWII weapons in my models, and with such fixed content it won't take long to get it all done. It's 100x's hard when you have to invent 100 things than just do 100 things.

Edit: Just a note...I am going to avoid actually using the word Nazi, or having any Nazi symbols, etc in the game. I'm sure there are many German people out there who would enjoy playing a little freeware game like this, and perhaps on this forum.
So I don't think stuff like that is necessary to get the effect I am going for. It's an american tourist vs. undead soldiers. It doesn't need any nasty nazi or anti-nazi propaganda or whatever you want to call it to be enjoyable.

Also I think according to German law even possesion of a game demo that has nazi symbols etc in it is illegal.

sounds great! if you wanted some humor, the ending could be him working his way through the underground and ending up finding a manhole, popping out of it, right into traffic in a heavily populated city, and everyone kind of goes "what in the world? what were you doing in a drain? why are you so dirty?" and as he starts to explain he gets pulled back in from behind, the end.

maybe not.

Actually I already have a very humorous ending planned but I don't want to give it away.

Ah what the heck it won't be in the demo anyway and I dunno if I will ever get that far.

Just in case SPOILER WARNING! Don't read if you don't want to know!

It ends with a cutscene (in game) moving to a tour group travelling through an old german mansion. The tour guide telling the tourist "blah blah blah, and it is believed that secret passages in this mansion lead to an underground bunker. But no the building plans show nothing underneath, and nobody has ever found anything to authenticate this rumor."

About that time a small statue in the middle of the room topples over, and the floor opens up. Out crawls the main character dressed in a WWII german uniform (he changed clothes to get dry) white hair (scared white) and a MP40 in hand. As he climbs up out of the hole looking like a WWII veteran tht missed the whole end of the war part.

The tour guide (female) then faints, and a small boy walks up to the main character, and says "It's over now."

Then perhaps a fly away out the door and into the sky with a deep cackling voice in the background.

Anyway I've been doing some concept work, trying to stick by the numbers and not get too ahead of myself though.

ZenBudha wrote:Actually I already have a very humorous ending planned but I don't want to give it away.

Ah what the heck it won't be in the demo anyway and I dunno if I will ever get that far.

Just in case SPOILER WARNING! Don't read if you don't want to know!

It ends with a cutscene (in game) moving to a tour group travelling through an old german mansion. The tour guide telling the tourist "blah blah blah, and it is believed that secret passages in this mansion lead to an underground bunker. But no the building plans show nothing underneath, and nobody has ever found anything to authenticate this rumor."

About that time a small statue in the middle of the room topples over, and the floor opens up. Out crawls the main character dressed in a WWII german uniform (he changed clothes to get dry) white hair (scared white) and a MP40 in hand. As he climbs up out of the hole looking like a WWII veteran tht missed the whole end of the war part.

The tour guide (female) then faints, and a small boy walks up to the main character, and says "It's over now."

Then perhaps a fly away out the door and into the sky with a deep cackling voice in the background.

Dude that's great

Thanks for the input it's one of the few really decent ideas I get once in a blue moon.

Here's a basic level concept shot. Just looking at textures, playing with lighting, and geometry.



It's going well so far I think I'm sure I will hit some hurdles later when trying to script the puzzles together.

On the interesting side of things I'm really playing with lighting to set the mood. The screenshot you see I think is the best result I've come to. It's just a regular spotlight entity with a value of around 300 but the cone arc is set way high at 165 degree's. Which with some default lighting and radiosity that the light it coming from the hooded light fixture.

Which is just a cone with a quicky texture done up and the light side set to light with a value of 300 and set to fullbright.

If your wondering how the lights are working in a WWII bunker is the year 2006. There is a objective that will be in the demo level where you have to find the generator. Gotta love those old diesel generators.

Untill then you are basically hunting around in the dark with a lanter or flashlight with undead soldiers prowling about. The reason I say lantern or flashlight is it depends on whether or not I can get the scripted flashlight to act right. Otherwise I will make it a lanter and use a dynamic light instead of a dynamic spotlight for a lantern effect.

The lantern I'm thinking might make for a better effect though. Since with a flashlight you have a bright focused beam you can shine down hallways, etc. With a lantern you have a dull radius of light that makes it easier to navigate than with a flashlight but you won't make out the undead soldiers untill they're very close.

Also you will have two health bars in the game. Normal Health and Spirit. If you spirit drops to 0 you lose all hope and become possessed. Some enemies are more than just walking corpses and have both physical and spirit attacks.

This leads to two kinds of armor as well. A helmet will give you a little physical armor, and holy items like crosses will give you spiritual armor.

Even if your not religious if you were trapped in a bunker surrounded by the walking dead you might start believing. lol.

Nice looking concept shot, and a very interesting game idea. Theres been a lot of WWII elements in games lately but haven't seen any tackle them from a future undead point of view. I like it! Sounds like it would be fun to develop and play. Are you going to take the time and implement online multiplayer? Or just sticking w/ the single player?

I also like the idea of spiritual armor. Usually people stick w/ armor and health or just health or armor.. Using a spiritual/religious elements in that way seems like a really unique idea. Can't wait to see how you implement it.

Well other than light scripting I am a non programmer. So I couldn't implement multiplayer if I wanted to.

On the same note I don't know what purpose a multiplayer aspect of the game would fit. Unless perhaps a co-op version with different levels and puzzles that require the quick thinking of two people.

There will be puzzles in the game. Some are riddle's, others are logic puzzles to unlock doors, some are timed puzzles.

An example of one I have come up with is there are 3 levers and a riddle. Each working counterweights to open a heavy door. However after pulling the first lever a door at the end of a long corridor will open releasing a rather nasty hoarde of undeads. Too many for the player to combat so he will have to figure out the riddle, and pull the levers in the right order before he is swarmed, and killed.
So randomly pulling levers untill the door opens won't cut the mustard.

Also some of the implementation of the spirit life will deal with fighting off possesion in the spiritual plane. Which in function will be parts of the level that teleport the player to a different level. Which will have a very extra evil feel, and will be maze/nightmare puzzle based. So if he loses the spiritual fight he becomes possessed and loses.

These styles of spirit battles will hit the player unannounced which will add to the tension. As he could just be walking down a corridor, when all of a sudden everything changes chains hang from the ceiling and blod spatters everything, and he's standing before a dark demon with no weapons. His only option of course is to run through a dark maze while being pursued.
His spirit will slowly drop the longer he stays in the maze.

Also there will be ghosts the player meets in the game that will converse with the player, and tell parts of the story. As to what happened in the bunker, and as to why they are trapped within even as spirits.


Also big thanks to Quest of Dreams who has managed to get a scripted flashlight that works like a flashlight should. So that will be in the game as well.
This will with modification also allow me to script player weapons to add innacuracy. Which the demo may or may not have as I'm sure finding the best way to do it will take some time.

How does this affect titan ic? Sounds good though i wouldnt add a springfield sniper to the mix if i were you. Or panzhershrecks unless you want to break a wall open. but shotguns, flamethrowers, pistols, bar, thompson, and the garand rifle would be cool. only you need the german versions of these weapons. o and a 20m gun. that would be cool if combined with gibs and blood spray.

Titan-IC isn't on hold per say. This is just a bit more of a guided effort however my progress has really slowed as I'm just slogging in so many directions at once.

Seems thats the only way I get anything done otherwise if I just have one project I will get nothing done except "thinking" about what I should be doing.

Little ideas and bits come to me here and there. Although for RF being such a "outdated" engine. In this environment of "The Bunker" it's really looking pretty darn good.

If I can bring my texturing abilities up to par which is why I've currently deviated most of my efforts to further grasping photoshop it's going to look very very nice I think.

I had already played with the textures some beyond that concept level shot above which was probably a 200% improvement. I hope to improve on that further because without that level of umm level lol immersion it's nothing.

The player needs to feel scared, and freaked out when the lights flicker at odd times ( and they will flicker ). I want the levels to really draw the player into the world untill he can darn near smell the undead coming. lol.

Sound is also a big hurdle as well, and I'm going to have to play around with a lot of sound effects before they get right. I do have one already I really like though that is an echoing creaky door opening. Sounds like someone sliding a heavy steel door open and sort of echo's seemingly down the corridors.

I've been up to no good with textures...



Also you can see now new geometry has been added. Starting to slowly come to life.

I would say I've been getting side tracked but everything helps my projects more than it hurts.

Edit: Just a note it LOOKS like there is bumpmapping going on but there isn't. It's a mixture of the texture, and the way the lighting and lightmap scale is setup. Like I said before I think I am really impressed by the way RF is rendering this level.

oh. my. GOSH!

INSANE! I love it!

I wish i could make textures like you; the one aspect of game development i havent pursued much.

What software do you use to make your texutes? Because they look great.

Photoshop and they are large textures at 512x512. I just scale them all at 0.25

Another trick as well is how you start building your level in RFEditPro. I always start with a 128 x 128 x 16 brush, and make sure the top edge is at 0, and one corner is at 0, 0.

Since all textures tile according to world coordinates. This way all of you textures if made correctly will tile without adjustment.

Looks great. And at a time when the maket is saturated with traditional WWII games this seems like a real interesting take on the genre.

No no no you'll let the dead out...