Catathrenia // June Update 2

 

 Bad news first: I had to delete 6 entire levels. Yeah! there is a lot of work going straight down the drain. Those maps where simply not working well, went too hard on the memory cap or wheren't fun to play. 

If you are working in a wierd setting like this where there isn't that much realism to hold on to, you still need to give the game some sort of grounding and sense of danger or you hit the player over the head and the game ends up being boring. You can also not string together 4 levels of pure puzzle solving and story elements or you lose the folks who are not that invested in the storyline, not yet really into the setting or just want some relieving action. You gotta get the player to get chased by something or the entire hostile athmosphere gets lost. There is a lot of work involved to get a game like this working in fpsc. 

 Bottomline, I had a hard cutback on progress but it made up for better flowing- and more coherent gameplay.

 I got to work on the health system which invites to explore the level (we'll get to that later). It strongly relies on the use of various chemicals and items you can find and you can carry 3 flasks (healthpotions) with you. In fact, there is a passive inventory (keys, puzzleitems and ingredients) and 2 active inventories: (Weapons and Potions). Things you carry and can consume are allocated as icons on the left side of the screen (very small and stylish icons...dont worry, I wont overload your HUD with crap) In Fact, the health-o-meter isn't visible at all and can only be triggered by pressing a button. You'll see what I did there once its finished. :) 

 I've been thinking about adding a few more weapons. It has 3 so far and since I clear the inventory of any tools and documents you dont need anmyore there is room for infinite guns. If you got a stellar idea that would suit the setting, feel free to air your mind. ...I've been concidering a crossbow btw. :)  

You will also get mechanical puzzles to solve...this is not part of one of them. In fact, thats just there to spice up the first chapter's scenery.  

I really like this room. There will be a lot going on in it aswell :)  

Don't worry, I won't overuse windows as much as the screenshot reals might make you think  

That thing is... I dont know what that is either  

Well, you get a lot of readingmaterial in here too...but hey, in other games you just get a screen full of text, here you can run around with it. ;) 

   

Thats from the "desperation" subchapter...its very minimalistic  

 I finally have a good setting for the dogman character...so in your face! He has new sounds too. 

Thanks for reading.

Catathrenia June Update 1

Quick update!

I made some progress with the game and felt like sharing a few thoughts. I aim at telling the story with strong visuals that should represent certain ideas which is why I will be most likely forced to model a lot of extra props for this title (which has been originaly designed to be as lazy as possible...but I guess thats just how creativity works). I already made like 30 entities including variations and I'm just getting started with the more abstract levels.I show you all of this later.

Lately I remade and reimported Benge's G3 from Modelpack 6 which is the most prominent weapon in this game. And yes! There will be weapons in this game for two reasons. 1: I always wanted to make a game featuring the Modelpack 6 Weapons which I never did. 2: Its a horrorthemed game, no survival horrorgame or similar. I don't aim only to scare you, I aim to do a lot of artwork and convey a story while making a fun game.
Besides the usual retexture, soundexchange and Airmod polishing I also mapped all textures on a single image and attached a customized shader to it which makes it look faboulus in motion. I made a screenshot to convey hot it behaves.

Weapon Shader Demo

Upper: facing lightsource
lower: not facing any lightsource

as you can see, the shader adapts to its environment and is gentle on the hands while a lot more intense on the gun itself. This is in itself not a big accomplishment, I just want to point it out, that even though my game has a strong overgrained and overbloomed style to it, the gun never shines like a christmastree while I see a lot of other FPSC titles where the shader effects are so overdone that it hurts the eyes. Most of the time they look like shiny plastic. Thats a major complaint I have about shaders, they are rarely used in a decent way. (to be fair, in FPSC they are a pain in the rectal area)

Thats enough of that

Don't worry, clocks will only be a big thing in the second interval.

A friendly music composer I met on Moddb made a bunch of neat ambientmusic for my game In fact, this will be a great contrast and addition to my ...slightly more insane musical pieces. You should definately check them out and his other stuff:

Catathrenia BG Soundtrack

I also wrote (yes! wrote...prepared and thought about and all that) a bunch of possible riddles and puzzles to build into the game. Most of them are hard work and I will certainly drop a lot of them as I simply don't have the time. I just hope I can get your interest in some of them as I don't want to bore you with "find the switch and drag the box over the platform" puzzles.

Now, a few more images and I hope to see you all next update.

Feedback and questions are appreciated!

-Adrien

FPSC // Catathrenia Mai Update

Evening!

I felt like doing a last reality grounded update on this. The leveldesign from this set on will be a lot more surreal

This is also the place where you receive the intro speech. I want to have an animated character here having a conversation with the protagonist..however, we all know what happens to naive ambitions a developer has at the start. I am very optimistic about this project though so you can expect a few extra goodies from me.

Thats pretty much it for this time.I won't blabber on about my project and bore everybody. He, who has a question shall feel free to ask whatever he wants.

The game has a budget of 85 € now. (I bought some videoeditting software and a few points for the GC store)

Future levels will be strongly inspired by one of my favorite painters: Salvador Dali!!

-Wolf

FPSC // Catathrenia - April Update ²

Quote: "“Dreams are illustrations... from the book your soul is writing about you.”"

That quote doesn't quiet fit the storyline but its nice anyway.

Remember when I told you that I will explain the new storyline? Well...I still want to do that as I have 2 Catathrenia updates on the to-do list for this week. (yes! I have a to do list now). This also includes 3 conceptual drawings for this project.

Well, someone on this planet might have red my outcry review on my blog...and if you did, I stated that some clam should do a "moving" game in an old-footag-grainy movie style (instead of a boring slideshow). Why not being that clam? I think the style works very well with the game's ambitions. Make up your own opinion on some images:

(Remember that you can also play this game in prestine black and white)

-Wolf

FPSC// Catathrenia April Update 2

Constant development is the best development because it never stops.

I was jerking around with my entire shader collection to get a good ghost shader for hours...until I realised that the best ghost is done without any shader. Check out this image and see if you can see it creeping through the hallway.

Its not unlikely that this ends up being another hallway shooter. I really don't know.
We will all see once the full version is out there. I think this will be a 1.18 Release. So far I released something in every version since 1.14 (I think) so I don't see why skip 1.18.

You guys probably want to see some more screenshots, so here you go:

FPSC// Catathrenia April Update 1

I've had another full 2 hours this evening for Catathrenia. Well, its save to say that the final game won't blow anyones mind, but it will run solid and deliver some good mood and fun.

I also managed to get a good shader for my Weapons done. However, some firearms will get a different shader later on.

I made some images but I barely got myself around mapdesign. So yes! No big fat imageblocks like in the Shavra-Dead Frequency thread on the TGC Forums. I will get back on Shavra btw. big thanks to Bugsy! He has gotten some gears going in my head that should allow me to get the thing working now in 1.19

There are no more artifacts of the normalmapping or overshaded specular highlights on that book anymore. I spiced up the texture aswell because thats how I roll.