Horror Maze Concept 03

Cecilia's Dress

Cecila- Victorian Anatomy study

I have looked into various books with illustrations and photographs of women from the 19th Century. As most people know, Victorian women wore almost ridiculously tight corsets from a young age (to the point that their rib cages had trouble developing). I wanted to take the forms from the photos and especially the illustrations, as they seem to express what Victorians considered beautiful/perfect/pleasant to look at.
The round and sunken shoulders for example is very obvious in many victorian illustrations/paintings of women.

Eye colour is very important to me, I feel because survival horror tends to lean towards the more monochrome tones, colours that exist anywhere in design will stand out a lot more than usual. However I do plan to give my level colour. Cecilia is a very important figure in the level.

Importing a Custom Character

I finally managed to import a custom character, and replace the default Liam Cathode robot. I've brought back the gun in hopes of using the physics gun to grab hold of objects.

Blockout- starting from scratch

I took the time to create some placeholder textures just to see how the area looks with proper surfaces. This is a blockout from scratch since the last one I had to scrap due to scripting complications.
Sadly I think everything is a little too big- too wide and spacey, this might be due to the lack of objects, but I can still imagine it being too friendly and open. I will alter this after getting feedback.

I would like to create a very bare HUD, here you can see I previewed the level without one. I imagine every time the player gets caught by the monster she will only have one or two chances before she dies, so instead of using a life bar I would need something else to indicate injuries like the reddening of the screen or shaking camera.

 

Sound Effects Recording No.1

Today I went to my first recording in the Sound Room at the university. These are some of my unedited sound samples. I recorded a lot of potentially useful sounds, including moving objects, picking up books, page sfx, footsteps, scrap noise. I decided to first record these less important sounds to get a grip on the recording equipment today.
Next week I will be recording the Cecilia's voice, the monster's noises and hopefully get a squeaky door hinge in.

  Footsteps_Sneak01 by Jin Suen

  Footsteps_FastWalk by Jin Suen 

  Doorknock by Jin Suen

  OpenBook01 by Jin Suen

Victorian Decor Concept

Victorian Decor

As I have been on a trip to look at plants at the Welsh Botanical Gardens- it reminded me that I needed to consider the decor inside each room of the maze. I decided that each room would resemble a rich but abandoned and worn Victorian home. Most will have a generic look, others that contain puzzles will have it's own theme.


I looked into flora in the Victorian era. Flowers given to people always had meaning- hence you had to pick your bouquet carefully to convey the right message (otherwise to not offend the receiver).

Source: Victorian Bazaar-The Language of Flowers

Graphic Mania- Free for commercial/personal use Textures

AI tutorial

http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/Legacy:Basic_AI_Scripting_Tutorial

Gathering textures

I went to the Welsh Botanical Gardens with Joel Taylor & Geraint James. I managed to collect some useful textures that I may use. Mostly floor boards, walls, and potted plants.

Decor textures

Potted plants, rock for debris.

Project Folder Setup

As most classmates will know I've had a real hard time trying to get a proper working Project folder- with set up that would allow me to edit and change script files. The solution I found was from a former student who created a Tutorial just to meet my level of beginner.
Henrik Claudelin's Tutorials

I have only just begun, so my Source folder is still quite empty:

Unfortunately after setting up folders, I found an error, that would prevent my 'CustomGame' gameplay to show up in the 'World Properties' of UDK editor. So my previous block out will have to be scrapped.

Camera so far...
I am still in the middle of trying to set up the camera, so that the default will be third person. Instead of working from scratch, I will just 'extend' my scripts from the existing UTGame script files, since most properties needed in the 'Pawn' and 'PlayerController' are already there.

Maze01- Blockout 01

First version of Maze01 plan

Starting to block out in UDK a portion of the first Maze. I found out a week ago there is no subtraction level mode- I find this only somewhat bothersome as I can find an easy alternative in the workflow of creating my level. I started with a very large cube brush first of all.

Blocking out Character

I have finished modelling and rigging a basic female body form that will act as a make-shift model in the presentation of my Pitch.

I still have not full decided how she will look, hopefully I will get some feedback on which design is most desirable.

I am well on my way to blocking out a basic monster character for my pitch too. This is not the final design, but for now will do.

I added more hairstyles for the character I'm creating, there are so many variations, that I will leave it to feedback to help me decide which character is more suitable.