A Change Of Scene. . .

Hello dear blog viewers! I'm here today to talk about the new sprint. It is my aim to have a full grey box of the hotel with all the assets from the previous sprint incorporated. That means the 'fear' triggers, sounds and GUI elements.
As it stands, I've had a couple of changing ideas about the Arcadian (the name of my not-so-luxurious hotel).  In the summer, I busted out mostly the entire intro cut-scene for this game, fully textured and all. I was quite happy with the shape of the Arcadian, but when it came to this sprint I suddenly realised I had neglected to take into account how the base shape would affect the infrastructure of the levels. To better explain and clarify my thoughts, here is a rough floor plan of the hotel and how it might look as a level design.

I used the top view of the Arcadian 3D model to serve as a basis for the shape of the building. From it, you can see I planned the individual hotel rooms on the ground floor, complete with reception desk, dining areas etc. Whilst this plan seems acceptable, it would make very poorly for a horror game environment. There are only two corridors which are conjoined, and as a player it would feel short and definitely would not hold the atmosphere I am wanting to create. To fix these issues, I thought back to when I originally had the idea of this game, and in the dusty cupboards of my memory found some mental images I first had about how the Arcadian interior might look. I used these rough ideas to draft out an iterated version of the floor plan which I'm certain will look and feel a lot closer to a horror setting than the plans above.

This plan will definitely make for a more suitable place to hide demonic manifestations and curious entities. From 'Start' the player will be introduced to the note system, in a handy but brief 'instruction manual' on the reception desk. From there, they move forward into the real body of the hotel. The blue arrows indicate the players choice of direction. With many more corners, corridors and hotel rooms the map is bigger, almost maze like. With the narrow corridors and corners it will be easier to implement jump scares such as the one featured in my 'fear' test video posted in the last blog, and will generally act as better way to build and keep the momentum of tension. With regards to the hotel rooms, not all will be available. Even with prefabbed models I could churn out in their hundreds, it's impractical and I feel would be a bad design choice for this game. Suspense lies in the unknown, and surprises (horrible ones in this game especially) are easier to create when the player hasn't a clue of what to expect. Of course the grey box based on this design will be most likely untextured and very rough around the edges, but that's ok. It means that by the end of this sprint I will know whether or not my design methods are working. I'm feeling confident though, and really quite excited to play-test my grey box level and see just how unsettling it really is. I never thought I'd be excited to be scared, but that's what you do when you love something enough I guess. . . .