Update much needed!

While I've been very busy with other work, I've also ended up with some personal issues that effected my timescale.

I have however been working hard on trying to catch up. While also adding more to my research as I go along, this is mainly because you never know when something inspiring is going to turn up. I added a few things to my research, one thing in particular I added was a spooky picture from a cave system within the UK.

Here is a link to the Daily Mail that reported it:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2071084/Make-bones-Britain-s-scariest-cave-Photographer-captures-eerie-skull-rock-face-remote-diving-spot.html

Meanwhile I have been working hard on the design, to ensure it works properly and can be played through with scary moments. I have planned out, layout/direction, assets, events, sounds and the walkthrough.

Here are some design pictures I've been working on:

I have enjoyed doing this, and have put a lot of effect into this to ensure that it is going to work properly, so I put a lot of thought into it.

After some good feedback I realized I needed to think about legends and old folk tales, these are in the plenty and I found myself returning to an old collection of mine called "The Spine Chiller Collection" It was something I collected as a young teenager when my interest in horror was growing.

While this may have been aimed at young teenagers such as myself it is full of loads of information about horror, folks tales, legends, mysteries and more. There were apparently about 60 editions, however I only got to about 33, I don't really remember how I lost out on the rest. However, It did allow me to add some interesting stuff, some things I had forgotten all about. My research book has reached over 12,000 words and nearly 60 pages.

On the other hand, I started looking at my design which was greatly helped by my knowledge of coach and train stations. For 4 years I traveled up and down the country by Coach and Train during a long distance relationship. I guess this is an interesting fortunate advantage as I'm rather intrigued by the layout of buildings and areas and I took note of a lot of them.

One thing I know is that I'll take inspiration from an experience I had at one of the coach stations. Just off Milton Keynes my coach took a detour so I could make a switch to another coach to head up north to Manchester. Me and group of other travelers all got off at this small station at about 9pm on a Sunday night, and it was basically deserted. The entire building was shut, the toilets were locked apart from one that had its door kicked in that lay smashed on the floor. We all stood under the canopy that sheltered us from the rain and, but also was the only source of light. During winter time it had gone dark much earlier and was pitch black. I found myself with the other all huddling under this one light as the public phones were broken and the lights over the top were flickering on and off.


It was actually pretty scary, as it ran off a slip road and no other houses were anywhere near it just trees creating more darkness and I couldn't see very far through the black of night in any direction. I was stood there for about an hour, and no one moved and inch, all it needed was for some monster to appear from the dark and it would have been a perfect horror movie scene. I know if I can create that effect in my level it'll be a good project.

Randomly I typed in Bus Stop Monster and I ended up finding this, which in turn helps bring me to where I am in my design. While I've been currently trying to design the layout that would be interesting to look around, what is important is that it would need a good reason to look the way it does (being derelict and broken), just a little back story to help make the level scary and make the player think. I think this monster looks great, and it makes my head spin with ideas, I'll certainly use it as inspiration.

I've been thinking that I wanted this place to look new but destroyed, like it was built but quickly abandoned  after a sequence of deaths or something. I could help explain this story by making the player start off using a  newspaper where the story is explained. Since I'm not copying an actual existing area I have room to create an imaginary town with its own legend, leaving this new facility haunted and ruined. 

Overall I've written a research document of 51 pages with over 11,000 words and I'm quiet chuffed with it, the only problem being that I need to get on with the design as quickly as possible.

Media

I've looked at games such as:


Penumbra: Overture/Black Plague/Requim

Resident Evil Series

Silent Hill Series

 I broke these down by assessing what was scary about them and why they were popular such as:

·         Lighting & visual,  Anticipation, Alone, Sound,Story, Characters effects and Game Events

I then looked at films such as:

The Thing

Alien Series

I also broke these down the same way, trying to pull out the best features such as The Things mystery and trust between the characters as they don't know who the thing is. Also the actual Aliens design for the Alien series is iconic as its well designed and frightening just to look at and how it works.

I then also looked fears within the real world such as abandoned towns, ghost houses and events such as Halloween.



Gunkanjima, Japan

This was an abandoned coal mining facility with living apartments and was separated from the rest of japan as it lay on the coast on a small island. It was left alone after the demand for Coal dropped and being left and never entered again for 20 years, the public are now allowed to go on tours there. From this picture it almost looks like something from Resident Evil.

Borley Rectory, England

The Borley Rectory in Essex England is classed as one of the most haunted places in the entire world, and the most haunted in England. This old manor has since been damaged from a fire and doesn't stand the same as it used to, but was believed to be haunted from the start after being built over a graveyard.


Halloween

Halloween is celebrated over various parts of the world, this is where people dress up as monsters, ghosts and other scary things as they try to dress up as things that scare themselves or other people and have fun with it.

Common phobia’s 

It was also important for me to bring up fears and phobias that people get, so I went through a list of them and picked out ones I believed I might be able to use to good effect within my level.

Here is a list of phobia’s that I could try to work upon within my horror level

Claustrophobia

Fear of confined spaces

·         Feeling trapped within an enclosed space, or simple a room

Acrophobia

 Fear of heights

·         This fear can lead to anxiety attacks and avoidance of high places.

Agoraphobia

The fear of situations in which escape is difficult, or a fear of leaving what they already know
This may include crowded areas, open spaces, or situations that are likely to trigger a panic attack. People will begin avoiding these trigger events, sometimes to the point that they cease leaving their home.
Approximately one third of people with panic disorder develop agoraphobia.

Astraphobia

The fear of thunder and lightning

·         Also known as Brontophobia, Tonitrophobia, or Ceraunophobia.

Achluophobia

The fear of the dark

·         One of the more natural fears that can become a phobia

Autophobia

 Fear of being alone or of oneself.

I've spent the past 2 weeks working hard at getting examples and breaking down to why they are scary. Noting down the best features or films, games, real life scary events and places.

Looking at and breaking down the features of successful films such as Alien, The Thing and Dawn of the Dead.


Looking at and breaking down the features of successful games such as: Resident Evil, Silent Hill and Amnesia the Dark Decent.

Bringing up exactly what was effective about all these horrors such as:

DOOM: Sudden events, the fact that monsters could spawn anywhere at sudden moments, from doors walls and secret panels.

Resident Evil: Setting, being placed in a strange old mansion where there appears to be no one inside, yet its lights are on and rooms are locked tight. Every voice echoes in the large rooms and strange moaning sounds enimate from around dark corners.

Silent Hill: Psychological, Used pshychological aspects to help scare the player such as basing creatures around torcher.

The idea is breaking al these down will help give me the understand to how to create scarier events for my level.

The first part of my research is to have a look at the general horror games that are already out there. Not only will these help to give me inspiration it allows me to see what has already been done, what was successful about them and what was not successful about them.

I have a good general knowledge of survival horror games, but researching into these again and looking deeper into what was frightening with them and what wasn't, by learning what was scary and unique or well just well done, will help me learn more about the subject and pay off in my design.

Therefore taking note of all of these will help greatly when coming to my design to ensure I am actually using effective researched techniques. This will also ensure I do not something that has been done, or I can see what things have been done poorly in the past and learn from them.

After some more people surveyed and plenty of thought from my self I realized that this survey was not being definitive enough to give me a final choice. Although it has narrowed it down somewhat from the bigger list that I had at the start.

This has brought me down to this:

Deserted Street
Coach/Tram Station
Train Station
Dockyard
Container Ship


I am leaving the final choice down to more advanced research. This will also be influenced by factors such as: feasibility, whats already been done and cliche idea's. Hospital was another popular vote on the survey, but its been done an awful lot, and it is asking for predictable cliche idea's being done for it. Therefore I dropped hospital from the list of possibilities.

So, now it is important for me to do more research into horror in general and fears, as that will help me to choose an environment, and then what will be in there to make it scary. I believe sound will be an important aspect of it.

I have been asking around to get as many views as possible on for this project before I decide which place I'm going to  "Horror up" so to speak. I must also note that I decided to make Bus/tram station together as one area, as alot of people opinions came through that they would be scarier as one big area.

After three initially took off, it has changed and its become and interesting way to see what people would ifnd scary. All the options within this survey are taken from idea's I believed with feesable, but I left the option open for extra entry's if people had something else specifically on their mind. I also decided t let people choose a first and second choice, I did this fora  few reasons, first and foremost was because I have noticed from previous experience that a lot of people get stuck between two choices, but also because I thought it was another way to see how popular they really are. If two choices get 10 votes each, but one has 7 second choice votes while the other has only 2, it would again become another way to seperate the most popular.





However it has become apparent that it hasn't worked out the same way I thought it might, and ther are some choices that are very popular as a second choice but are lacking behind in a first choice.

So far the front runners are:



Desserted Street
Hospital
Bus/Tram Station.

The least popular are: Office Block & Antarctic Outpost.

However, Dockyard and the Containership were vastly more popular as a second choice than anything else, the Container Ship actually got more second votes than anything did first votes. If this survey is not definitive enough, I may have to do some research into the most popular ones and see which one I feel would be the best to do, for example I already am aware that Hospital has been done plenty of times before and I would rather try to find something more original and less used, so to therefore be more interesting.

After speaking to with my tutors, I have taken the survival horror path. However rather than just following the dockyard choice I have already made, I decided to begin a survey to find out what area's people really find scary.

So far there's a particular 3 that are fighting for first place, so its close at the moment but I'm going to ask as many people as possible before making my decision. I'm also going to try and be a bit more original by avoiding certain cliche themes or moments within the genre to ensure I make an original and scary level.

A New Project

So, this is actually for my Honors project in university. Here I'm going to be posting up everything about the project as I progress.

First things first, I need to formulate an idea. I know straight away I'm going to work on a level design because it's what I choose to do and feel I am best at. Designing and building the game world is really enjoyable to me, and I know once I get going I'll love this project.

I seriously need something interesting to do, to make my project stand out as well as giving myself something to aim for. I started looking at two ideas, one of which was to make a level based around a narrative of discovery, where the player could wake up with no memory and have to discover where they are and who they are. I started constructing an idea of being in a bank and not knowing if your a robber or not. I gave it a title of "A Lost Identity".

My second Idea was to create a level based on a survival horror, and this would primarily be based on scaring the player. I have thought about this being based at a dockyard and would be called "Unexpected Cargo". This would involve the player being a worker at the dockyard and when a ship arrives with some cargo it would have something mysterious on it.


Those are my two main idea's at the moment, and while I prefer the survival horror one, as its my favorite genre, I am keeping myself open minded at the moment until I finalize on a project with my tutors approval.