New Artistic Direction

It's been a long time since I've taken the time to post anything. This is partially due to the fact that I had finals and spring break as well as a lack of artistic development. Well I'm happy to say that we now are back on track and moving again. The engine is still the same, but much more fine tuned, which is obviously a good thing. Now that we have a lead artist that is constantly producing work for the game development is streamlining towards a solid looking survival horror. But don't take my word for it, take a look at a few screenshot:

Alright don't hate too much. The character that we have right there is just a standard animation holder. This will allow us to make the animations look much smoother before they even get colored in. As you can see the level of detail has just jumped up so much which will make for a much scarier/more believable survival horror game.

Also please check out Cody's Website. He is a filthy good artist and a genuine bad ass.

I'll keep you guys up to date with any new important updates

Game Demo

Hey guys,
I've been working on this game for about a month now and I wanted to post a quick little demo to let you guys see the progress.
Here is the link to the downloadable.
This is just an experimental level so nothing is final. Mostly this is to test controls and basic gameplay.
Controls:
- Move forward (only type of movement): W
- Open Inventory: I
- Turn on Flashlight: F
If you don't want to download and just look at pictures here you go.

Zombies are here!

 First off I want to say that the internet is an awesome resource and I'm really glad there are talented artists out there. Not that I have made that clear I present you a preview of the zombies. There are about 8 more that are not shown in these screenshots since I don't want to spoil the fun.

Executable Game Demonstration *downloadable

I was informed that my site does not have any downloadable content for you guys to test out. I have found an old executable demo of the game. Here is the link: control demo

Engine Development Update

So I realize that I haven't really put an update up in a while so today I am posting with some good news. First off I would like to mention that I have found a number of texture packs that go perfectly with the style of the game and at this moment I am trying to filter through the 1000s of images and figure out which ones are going to be the best to use. Even though this may be a tedious process I believe that the end result will be something spectacular. 

I have also made some changes to the engine itself. I have updated the inventory to be smarter and more intuitive which I believe will make the game play much more enjoyable. I have also added a resident evil type glow to tall items that have not been interacted with. If any of you have played some of the RE games then you know that an item will glisten when it is intractable, I believe by adding this element to the game it will open many doors and lead to some really interesting puzzles. The screenshot below is a demonstration of the light engine at work along with the new glow of the item

The last thing that I want to mention is that the engine is almost done! I still have to work out how the dialogue system is going to work but besides that the rest of the engine is complete. Once I have deemed the engine to be complete I will be looking for some level designers to create some cool levels and see what this engine is capable of.

Inventory and a Sneak Peak of our Main Character

I haven't posted an update in quite a while so I figured that I would give a small development update.
Since I posted last I haven't made any huge changes to the structure of the engine. The only thing that I have really changed is the main character. This is thanks to our talented artist who has made the new character animations. If you would like to take a look here it is:

Looks like a good main character right? I think so. I also think that the way the sprites were drawn it would be easy to add variations of the animation. Right now we already have a gun animation which looks pretty sweet. As the project progresses I expect for more animations like this to come around, but right now this is a great start. 

Wow, I havent really talked about the title of this post at all so now let me discuss a little bit about the inventory development. So for this project I really wanted to focus on managing your items; this is not to say that it should be difficult to have all the necessary items to progress. What I want to accomplish is the feeling of progress. For example at the beginning of the game you may only have a torch for your light source. Obviously, a torch will not stay lit forever and will eventually run out. So it would require some lighter fluid and a lighter to keep this light source alive. These three items would be integral for the torch to work. As the player progresses they may obtain a lantern which may be better but the player must choose to leave behind the torch which is taking up valuable space if they are to move on to the lantern. 

With the inventory engine that I have created certain items will have great importance but they may take up more of the inventory slots then other items. If anyone has ever played Resident Evil 1 then you know how important managing your inventory is and hopefully with my engine the same feeling will come through. 

The Light Engine

If you have read my previous post about the goal of the project then you would know that I wanted an light engine that would allow for light to be precious. After a lot of research I found the CBNA SmartLight Engine; this engine is absolutely brilliant. It allows you to adjust every aspect of world light as well as creating customized lighting effects. The other thing that I really like about the engine is how it interacts with objects, rather than having to create shadow sprites the engine will calculate how the shadow should look from just the original sprite which of course makes the development process much easier all around. For those of you that have not seen the engine here is a video that will blow your mind:

As you can see from this demo there are many different world variants that allow for mass customization.