Scaring people sh*tless....
by Aaron Weingartner · in Game Design and Creative Issues · 06/03/2007 (9:45 pm) · 23 replies
Oki, so I am not a programmer....or 3d artist...or anything else particularly helpful to actually making the game...BUT! I do have a concept! And am working on a story and the research necessary....slowly....It's hard to convince a psychiatrist that I'm not crazy when talking about insanity...
Any-who. I was wondering if anyone liked this idea, there's one particular aspect of gameplay that I'm not really willing to share, but if I can get a team together and make the game then they will surely know. :P
Demens-Sanitas (dementia-sanity in latin...cheesy, I know >.> but I like it dammit!)
This is more or less just a horror game, purely with my personal attempt of seeing just how far you can push a player before they truly question their own sanity.
Plot: (not groundbreaking here, just trying to find something technically plausible) Recently a scientist working for the military has happened upon a virus that at it's most basic form causes insanity, but also evolves rapidly and can incorporate aspects of other viruses, bacteria, and some chemicals to form a new unique form of the base virus. A facility designed as a mental asylum was built to house 'patients' as test subjects in order to examine the virus and it's possible uses as well as how to control it.
Mistakenly the virus came into contact with airborne bacteria and mutated to spread throughout the facility through the ventilation and other means, infecting all within.
The facility is quickly put on lock-down while the local police are alerted of strange noises and screams from within the facility.
As people go insane inside, the original scientist discovers his own form of insanity, holding a strong desire to break free and infect the world.
Player's view: The player starts as a patient who only has the beginning form of the virus. Their initial goal is to discover what's going on and why they are stuck inside the facility. As the game progresses they learn about the virus and how it affects people, and themselves, and must get to work trying to subdue the virus long enough to escape the facility. This task becomes increasingly difficult as the NPCs around them become more insane and dangerous, their own level of insanity constantly increasing so they have to fend off their imagination, and they also learn of the scientist's intention to escape and spread the virus which means they are in a footrace to escape and warn the world of the scientist's intentions (which in the current iteration of the story, you actually fail at...).
To keep things unpredictable, people around you will have variable amounts of time it takes them to go totally mad, so can never trust when they will stop saving you and start trying to eat you or think you're a giant killer koala.
Your player as well is always becoming more and more crazy, and it become harder to discern what is real and not real in terms of where you are and what is going on. You may eventually come to a point where everyone looks like some kinda inanimate object if you aren't careful to how your character is behaving. o.0
More to come when I can think.....
Any-who. I was wondering if anyone liked this idea, there's one particular aspect of gameplay that I'm not really willing to share, but if I can get a team together and make the game then they will surely know. :P
Demens-Sanitas (dementia-sanity in latin...cheesy, I know >.> but I like it dammit!)
This is more or less just a horror game, purely with my personal attempt of seeing just how far you can push a player before they truly question their own sanity.
Plot: (not groundbreaking here, just trying to find something technically plausible) Recently a scientist working for the military has happened upon a virus that at it's most basic form causes insanity, but also evolves rapidly and can incorporate aspects of other viruses, bacteria, and some chemicals to form a new unique form of the base virus. A facility designed as a mental asylum was built to house 'patients' as test subjects in order to examine the virus and it's possible uses as well as how to control it.
Mistakenly the virus came into contact with airborne bacteria and mutated to spread throughout the facility through the ventilation and other means, infecting all within.
The facility is quickly put on lock-down while the local police are alerted of strange noises and screams from within the facility.
As people go insane inside, the original scientist discovers his own form of insanity, holding a strong desire to break free and infect the world.
Player's view: The player starts as a patient who only has the beginning form of the virus. Their initial goal is to discover what's going on and why they are stuck inside the facility. As the game progresses they learn about the virus and how it affects people, and themselves, and must get to work trying to subdue the virus long enough to escape the facility. This task becomes increasingly difficult as the NPCs around them become more insane and dangerous, their own level of insanity constantly increasing so they have to fend off their imagination, and they also learn of the scientist's intention to escape and spread the virus which means they are in a footrace to escape and warn the world of the scientist's intentions (which in the current iteration of the story, you actually fail at...).
To keep things unpredictable, people around you will have variable amounts of time it takes them to go totally mad, so can never trust when they will stop saving you and start trying to eat you or think you're a giant killer koala.
Your player as well is always becoming more and more crazy, and it become harder to discern what is real and not real in terms of where you are and what is going on. You may eventually come to a point where everyone looks like some kinda inanimate object if you aren't careful to how your character is behaving. o.0
More to come when I can think.....
About the author
#22
What it would be is in the center of the head between the eyes a line would be traced directly out wherever the face is looking. Two cameras set directly to one side or the other lining up close to the eyes are on the model.
What would happen is as the line drawn out comes in contact with some object (possibly set with parameters like glass you would just pass through) the cameras will tilt to focus on or just past where the line makes contact. The images would be taken and merged together along the center or overlapped to create one image closely representing how binocular vision behaves (I think...).
For normal gameplay this wouldn't mean a whole lot. What it would do though is make it so at varying ranges of focus not only as the cameras shift to bring the target into center focus with environment around shifting with lens focus, they would also shift visually in and out of focus ever so slightly in the sense that certain things wouldn't line up the same way as a single image might and would thus push your focus to a different location. It would also be useful for me with doing certain visual effects like making people cross-eyed, lazy-eyed, or hazy vision kinda stuff.
06/12/2007 (9:29 am)
In the same vein of this game I'm wondering if it's a viable option to make a little bi-camera focus system.What it would be is in the center of the head between the eyes a line would be traced directly out wherever the face is looking. Two cameras set directly to one side or the other lining up close to the eyes are on the model.
What would happen is as the line drawn out comes in contact with some object (possibly set with parameters like glass you would just pass through) the cameras will tilt to focus on or just past where the line makes contact. The images would be taken and merged together along the center or overlapped to create one image closely representing how binocular vision behaves (I think...).
For normal gameplay this wouldn't mean a whole lot. What it would do though is make it so at varying ranges of focus not only as the cameras shift to bring the target into center focus with environment around shifting with lens focus, they would also shift visually in and out of focus ever so slightly in the sense that certain things wouldn't line up the same way as a single image might and would thus push your focus to a different location. It would also be useful for me with doing certain visual effects like making people cross-eyed, lazy-eyed, or hazy vision kinda stuff.
#23
So still a horror story for the most part. and it still has a strange disease, but the disease is pretty far removed from the main plot of the game(s).
The story would be about the origins of vampires and vampire lore overall. What it would do is trace back to the different cultures and faiths that came before as well as the mythology and folklore of the older civilizations back to the random and slightly removed from one another bits of lore that cumulatively are likely to have lead to the superstition of vampires ( such as the Akhkharu from Sumerian mythology).
It will focus initially on a few people, those being ones whose names will be taken and shifted to what we know from modern faiths. However, they will be getting placed in proper time and culture, pointing heavily towards the traditions and beliefs of the time as sources of the myths surrounding demons and vampires.
The disease comes into play as the logical explanation of the progression and rise of vampires. initially the disease won't even resemble what one might consider vampirism, but throughout the centuries that the game(s) cover, it will evolve and grow. The idea of vampires as we know today will be explained through the superstitions and lore, which will be the points adding to the mysticism surrounding vampires.
This idea really popped up when I was bored and complaining about Underworld 2. It got me thinking about the fact that nothing about vampires has ever seemed to attempt logically going back and disassembling the lore and showing it as it may have fit logically with the past cultures. They tend to instead just point to their own current beliefs as the answer, not considering the fact that the people that gave rise to what we think and know now likely didn't think the same way we did.
What this also means is that I've ended up trying to logically separate out the effects and progression of vampirism in the concept of how a disease may spawn and develop.
...Long and very confusing road of looking through what's junk and what's not in regards to accuracy of lore, :P but in my opinion worth it to make something interesting and very logically sound as a relatively universal descriptor of a common fantasy creature.
Think I'm going to be focusing on my psycho-analysis system first though. :P
08/09/2007 (8:36 am)
New plot!So still a horror story for the most part. and it still has a strange disease, but the disease is pretty far removed from the main plot of the game(s).
The story would be about the origins of vampires and vampire lore overall. What it would do is trace back to the different cultures and faiths that came before as well as the mythology and folklore of the older civilizations back to the random and slightly removed from one another bits of lore that cumulatively are likely to have lead to the superstition of vampires ( such as the Akhkharu from Sumerian mythology).
It will focus initially on a few people, those being ones whose names will be taken and shifted to what we know from modern faiths. However, they will be getting placed in proper time and culture, pointing heavily towards the traditions and beliefs of the time as sources of the myths surrounding demons and vampires.
The disease comes into play as the logical explanation of the progression and rise of vampires. initially the disease won't even resemble what one might consider vampirism, but throughout the centuries that the game(s) cover, it will evolve and grow. The idea of vampires as we know today will be explained through the superstitions and lore, which will be the points adding to the mysticism surrounding vampires.
This idea really popped up when I was bored and complaining about Underworld 2. It got me thinking about the fact that nothing about vampires has ever seemed to attempt logically going back and disassembling the lore and showing it as it may have fit logically with the past cultures. They tend to instead just point to their own current beliefs as the answer, not considering the fact that the people that gave rise to what we think and know now likely didn't think the same way we did.
What this also means is that I've ended up trying to logically separate out the effects and progression of vampirism in the concept of how a disease may spawn and develop.
...Long and very confusing road of looking through what's junk and what's not in regards to accuracy of lore, :P but in my opinion worth it to make something interesting and very logically sound as a relatively universal descriptor of a common fantasy creature.
Think I'm going to be focusing on my psycho-analysis system first though. :P
Aaron Weingartner
I've worked with the mental ward in the Evergreen State Hospital on multiple occasions. They had a inspector in there because a nurse had badmouthed a patient...
Wherever you live, they really need to enforce the law better... o.0