When formulating an idea for this project I originally detailed down four to five different ideas that might work inside of the Unity 3D engine, these ideas ranged from simple adventure games, all the way to FPS action games. I settled on the idea of a horror atmosphere set inside a seemingly abandoned mansion. The idea behind this was that I wanted to test myself, and my ability to use Maya effectively, this is one of the reasons why every model/animation in the project has been modeled by me. These models combined with a creepy backstory managed to bring my interactive environment to life.

 

Gameplay:

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Description of my project:

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The interactive environment I created is a horror walking simulator, it is a short section of a larger reaching story that I would love to expand upon in the future. The use of audio and animations throughout my project add to the story and how the user experience plays out. The project itself features around 9 unique animations, as well as 14 different scripts implemented in.

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Walkthrough/user experience:

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A typical user play through of my interactive environment will take a user around 5-6 minutes to complete depends on how much they explore. The game starts off with a cut scene; a car is driving down a dark and lonesome road before crashing because of an unknown and mysterious monster. Accompanying this cut scene is an audio track made to sound like the character talking back retrospectively about his experience. This section lasts for around 50 seconds and will establish what is to come in the story.

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From here we enter in the main playable area, where we learn that the user has been injured in the car accident we have just witnessed, and is now stranded in a remote location deep in the mountains. An on-going voice over plays throughout the game and provides a voice for the character. The playable character throughout the game is only able to walk at a very slow pace, to give the impression that one of his legs is badly injured. Walking forward a few meters will automatically pick up a torch that is lit on the floor; this allows for the user to illuminate the world around them as the project is set in a dark environment. Just after this an old gate appears to open by itself adding to the games tension, the user is now in a very dark and mysterious graveyard seemingly lost in time, but at a second glance looks recently disturbed by something. Everything in the area (including the coffins) has been recently reopened and is out on show to the user. A main grave in the middle of the area is made to look like a shrine to someone significant and walking up to this will cause it to break automatically.

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Just beyond the grave is the haunted house that the user must pass through looking for help. From the outside the house is large in scale but again seems abandoned by the owners, we can see this because of the many boarded up and smashed windows along the sides. In front of the haunted house are some large oak doors that will mysteriously open as the player searches for help. With a loud and eerie door creak the player is free to enter the large mansion, but it isn’t longer before paranormal encounters start happening.

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Just as the player gets a few meters inside, a large chandelier falls and smashes on the ground sending a shock to the player. From here the player is able to explore the main area of the mansion and will find that all but one door is boarded up. You will be able to see that this area is covered in trash, with bricks and wooden planks being littered throughout as well as graffiti on the walls. Each painting in this area has been vandalised with what appears to be blood telling the player to get out whilst they still can. Walking to the left hand side of the mansion the player will encounter said open door, before bring freaked out by the sound of a demonic laugh, and draws slamming from what seems to be the kitchen.

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Moving through these tight corridors brings us to an old kitchen room, which looks to be haunted in some way, every draw and cupboard in the place is constantly opening and closing, smashing in and out, cutlery is flying around the rooms and the tables are shaking. The player will need to navigate through this violent area still looking for help and in to the next room. The next area is a long L shaped corridor, once the player enters this room the door slams behind them and you are now stuck. Walking around the narrow corridor the player will be able to see some sort of creature that will proceed to chase the player until the screen blacks out, leaving his fate a mystery.

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Target audience/Experience:

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The project itself draws inspirations from old and new games features in the horror genre. One of the main ideas from the mansion comes from the franchises “Resident Evil” and “House of The Dead” as I wanted to create his creepy looking mansion with no obvious explanation to what is going on. The target audience and the games experience would be tailored to anyone who is a fan of the survival horror/ modern horror walking simulators. The reason behind this is that the game features a creepy atmosphere that is very similar to what we see in popular modern horror games.

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Implementation:

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The project itself is made up of two different scenes within unity, which loads after a certain time. The first being the non-controllable cut scene area, and the second being the fully playable walk around section. To create the “cut scene” section of the project I fist looked up how to make a cut scene and which way would be best, I found that using two different scenes and loading them together would be better, as it would allow me to easily switch between the two with no conflictions. The first scene itself is comprised of an animation that was created in Maya. This animation features a static road with the body of a car animated along; this animation also includes a car crash that adds to the game.

 

Layered on top of this is an audio segment that brings the whole scene together. The two scenes use two different skyboxes to give the illusion that time has passed from the car accident to the wake up. A problem I face when implementing this first section in to unity was how to switch scenes across. I eventually decided to use a timer attached to a script, which after 55 seconds would switch scenes automatically, giving my animation enough time to play and build up.

 

From here we move in to the main scene, where the player is greeted with a start screen featuring a logo and text. Now the actual game has started and this scene is comprised of 3 main sections: The gates, the graveyard and the mansion. Each one is a little different from the previous and drives the story forward with the user of different audio elements. The idea for “The gates” came about as a way to establish the opening; the game would originally have been a long walk way leading to a small house instead of having a graveyard and a large mansion. Throughout my game the FPS controller will collide with different Triggers that are linked to a script, this script will find which audio is attached to array and then play said audio to the audio listener. This allowed me to add different narrative sections throughout the game to give a sense that the player is really interacting with the environment. Each of these audio clips are also limited so that they can only be played once, after a user has triggered the audio it is then set to false and will no longer loop over. This first area also uses a form of AI to control some NPC rats on the floor, these rats randomly move around the meshed out area and add to the games atmosphere. These rats use a random script code that will send each one in a unique direct, giving the appearance that they are moving around.

 

Walking forward from here will activate a trigger; this trigger will open the gates in to the next area. These gates actually use an animation created in Maya and exported through to unity. Each animation I have in my game is linked to some sort of audio source (e.g. ambient sounds and other sounds like doors slamming) and this was used so that each element feels like it is real. Just before this gate is a torch, this torch is used in the game as the main way to view things around the world (as the game is set in a very dark and mysterious scene). How this works is that the FPS controller actually has an invisible torch placed inside it, which is activated when the player walks over another trigger, said trigger also has a placeholder torch placed on top. This gives the illusion that the torch is being picked up off the ground, allowing the player to go on. As mentioned before, each model that is featured in my game is something that I have created, and this can be said for the start area, the layout of this area is in fact deliberate and is used to drive the player forward towards the light source.

The graveyard section of the project features a creepy dim lit graveyard, complete with an animated smashing tomb stone that breaks when the player walks inside of the contact area. Each coffin in this area has been changed slightly to make the section look more realistic; I didn’t want everything to just be one model so every coffin is positioned differently and is unique in itself. In this area I also created some objects to resemble mud piles, this gives the idea that someone or something has been trying to dig up the graveyard. The metal fence around this area was created using a transparent texture (in the same way I made the barbwire fence). I originally started off by modelling the full fence but found that the number of polygons was too high, using the transparent texture way I was able to reduce some of the model down to only 24 polygons, therefore improving the gameplay and taking strain off the system.

 

The next section is the house itself, the entire house and its contents were created in Maya using a number of different models all combined at the end. Getting the correct scale of the house was crucial to how the game played, as every object had to be in line with one another, making the look of the house correct. I started off with creating the stairs as after looking at references images it seemed like the best play to start from, this was because the rest of the houses foundation can be extruded from this single piece. The player can only actually see the front section of the house; this was good as it meant I only had to model the interior and the sections which the player can actually see. Not modelling the full house would again mean that the project will run faster, as less polygon’s will be rendered in the game world. To gain access to the house the player must stand inside of a collider box that will trigger an animation I created; this animation slowly opens a creaky door as well as plays a sound clip. When creating the house I looked at many different reference images in order to get the correct look and feel. I eventually chose to go with an old over hanging house with windows lined up against the front, these windows all appear to be vandalized and trashed giving the appearance that the house is abandoned.

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Before the player is able to fully get inside the house a physics engine is enabled. This physics engine is attached to a chandelier that when triggered will fall to the ground, giving the appearance that the house is haunted; this was done using individual items with rigidbodies on each part. The object will stay as a whole until a collider is triggered turning the physics back on, and letting gravity do its job. Because these objects have a rigidbody and colliders, they can also be kicked around on the floor by the player models collider.

Exploring around the houses main lobby will trigger different optional audio elements that are dialog pieces coming from the player. The way I designed the lobby with the lighting was that I didn’t want users to be able to see too far with the torch, meaning they actually had to explore around to get an idea of where they were. This area also contains many different static props that give life to the world, all created in Maya. Turning left at the front door will bring us to a tight set of corridors with many different audio elements, this is the first time 3D sound is used in the game and it is something I have wanted to add since the start. The audio clip is of a laughing girl and will change depending on what location the player is in. following this corridor will bring the player to the next big section of the game, the kitchen. The kitchen is actually one big animation on loop, made to look like a poltergeist is smashing around like in films such as “Paranormal Activity”.

 

Walking through the kitchen the player will see and hear all of the draws in the room slamming open and closed, which again uses 3D sound. My original idea for this was to have physics attached to each object, that would fly out when the player enters the room, I tried this out in a blank unity file and found that this caused too much of a frame drop. The kitchen itself is made of one big animation; said animation was created in Maya using the animator. Each individual draw was animated to look different and closed at different times; this was then duplicated across to the cupboards and plates.

From here we come to the ending area, a long L shaped corridor. When we first walk in a trigger will slam the door behind the player sealing them in, this was done so that the player cannot escape the ending of the game.  This area also features an AI that will chase the player when triggered. The monster object has a crawling animation that again will crawl slowly towards the player when triggered.

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The AI used has two different states: static and following. When the AI is static, it waits until a collider is triggered in the area. When the monsters state is following, it will chase the player until both the FPS controller and the monsters colliders collide. This will in turn make and audio clip play as well as the games “game over” screen, the code attached to this will also disable the fps controller preventing further movement. This section of the game flows very well because of the different triggers/colliders, giving a real ending to the game.