Pipe Damage
A first-person horror action-adventure
Project details
Introduction
This project is a First Person Horror experience inspired by the mechanics of Amnesia and Resident Evil, with a setting of Miro Haverinen's Fear & Hunger: Termina.
The goal of this project was to utilize my template to create an intriguing and engaging horror-experience utilizing a 3-act structure.
Project details
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Developed over 6 weeks half-time
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Made using my pre-made template
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Brute mesh and animations from Mixamo
The Process
Realizing the experience
Preprod started with me filling out a reference board in order to strengthen the vision of the game. I also flowcharted the progress to help me get a hollistic view of the work ahead. Then I was ready to start on a rough sketch of the layout.
I decided on 3 macro landmarks. The moon, the traintracks and the large lake. These 3 landmarks served as a good bounding box for the level area.
Islev wasn't built in a day
I blocked out the 3 main areas in Unreal Engine 5, using the modeling tool mode to get organic shapes.
My flowchart was used as a guide to decide what was going to happen in each area and to make the design focused. I blocked out the critical path and supplemented it with vision blockers in the form aforementioned organic shapes.
The Moon
From the beginning of the project, I knew that I wanted the moon to be a major focal point in the level. I played around with a few different compositions, but landed on using the full moon as a datum with the city taking its old place.
In the last week of the project, I started adding more colour and detail to the environment. I used an auto-material I created that looks at the z-normal of meshes and applies a different color to it. After a pass of auto-materials and making sure that my values didn't block my critical path, all that was left was more playtesting and adjustments.
Finishing touches
Weapons
The objective of the level is to reach the city. To this end the player is given 3 different weapons. A revolver, a shotgun and an axe.
Weapons
The Player is given 3 different weapons to use. A revolver, a double-barrelled shotgun and an axe.
The revolver and shotgun have to be reloaded 1 bullet or shell at a time making reloading a more involving feature than getting back all ammo each time you press the reload button. This mechanic was heavily inspired by Frictional Games'
Amnesia: The Bunker
Enemies
Brute
The Brute is a slow, hard-hitting enemy and is the Tank archetype of enemies. Taking 5-6 bullets to kill, they are designed to take space away from the player and corner them.
The Brute is the most commonly used enemy in the level, and is supplemented by the Scurry to provide engaging enemy encounters.
Scurry
The Scurry is a fast but weak enemy and is based on the Headcrab enemy from Half-Life 2.
It's behaviour is that it chases the player, prepares it's attack for 0.25 seconds, and then leaps towards the player.
By themselves, they're no danger. But in a group or paired with a brute, the player will quickly lose ground.
Design Techniques
Points of Interest
The level has many alternate routes to take, each with different rewards to encourage exploration. This makes having a clear end goal important. I used the moon and city as a datum. It also lets me frame the hour to hour and minute to minute so they can be seen from several spots in the level.
Ten Second Rule
In order to keep player retention throughout the level, I used the ten second rule.
Since the level contains many servant spaces it's critical to keep the player entertained during those moments of down-time
Problems & Solutions
Problem
A problem I encountered was that players would drop into the room from a hole in the ceiling which made them miss a lever that opens the gate leading to the correct path, since the revolver placed next to it was more interesting. Players would first pick up the revolver which would result in an event triggering. They would then exit through the door of the building without seeing the lever and walk around aimlessly, not knowing where to go.
Solution
My solution was to move the revolver closer to the gate, which made the lever easier to spot. The room was also made larger, and part of it was rotated which gave a clearer line of sight to the gate. Alongside this change, I added a sound of the gate opening to draw more attention.
