feedback - showing progress to supervisor

After showing some of the progress to ken fee, he seemed fairly please with what I had done work-wise but, I was warned that since I wanted to apply trigger based events, it would probably be best to start off by adding place holders for the object events, just so that I could be more effective with my time in developing the game,  instead of going completely for the aesthetics and then finding out I don't have enough time to implement them.

Rough floorplan & unreal 4 layout

Since looking at the various blueprint floor plan for Japanese apartments, I began to gain a greater understanding of the layouts of these modern homes. And based on this research I started constructing rough Idea of how I wanted my own design of the apartment to look. This research was based off of the blueprints and the various images collected from the looks and layouts of these homes.

The image below shows the current development of the modern home which is based off of the rough floor plan above.

Unreal development progress 1

Through out these past couple of weeks of February, I have started on the development of the unreal 4 project level. Focusing mainly at this point just on the creating of the various assets included in ones own living room such as tables, couches, a TV & decoration etc. For the initial layout of this level, I tried to emulate the same/ similar positions, as the inspirational photographs of the Japanese apartment interiors, of which was  included in my previous research of modern apartments.

In these two examples, this shows progress from the initial development of the hallway, in unreal 4 engine to the recent stage with included door frames and adjusted lighting, on the image to your right. The adjusted lighting has use of dark reds to compliment the walls & intensify the mood of the horror elements.

Modern home research

For further research, I started off looking into various modern interiors getting an idea of the general ambience these apartment - more specifically focusing on Japanese homes. Instead of  going for a more traditional look like in the 1st semester and improving on it, I wanted to change it up a little bit switching to a more modern outlook. These pictures will be used as reference for the game environment I will be creating.

These two pictures below are a prime example of the use of good use of lighting, which could be used in the environment for a horror scene. the correct amount of light to see but enough darkness to suggest a sense of mystery.

Japanese modern home architecture ( Floor plans )

Instead of taking the regular approach of concepting  various ideas, of the overall impression of how I want this game to look based on its genre, I want to go generally for an architectural approach first, getting a idea of the layout and the objects contained within it. Below is a few examples of Japanese modern apartment blueprints. These give general ideas of where each room could be positioned and how filled the spaces are. From this you can picture an idea of the general ambience these apartments give off.

Ideas & thoughts

The plan for this first person horror game is to show an normal home environment and slowly include psychological horror elements into the scene as you explore around the house. At this current moment no antagonist characters will be included, just the psychological horror elements hidden around the environment will be used to terrorize the player. The idea for style will be to go for a realistic / stylized look for all its environmental props etc, and gradually add the elements of grunge & horror slowly as you progress through this apartment. Here are some of the ideas for what I am going for when it comes to the look of the apartment and ideas of how I will add the horror elements.

Realistic 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmp5mtyhfjY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azu01bG32fk

Stylized

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JB9wkGRvaYY

Mood board & analysis

Here in the analysis above, I am identifying what details the silent Hills P.T. developers have implemented into their game, to enhance the immersive quality. And how the realistic  nature & atmosphere of the game adds to creating a sense of presence

Compared to the initial horror mood board near the top, this mood board focused more on the immersive experience side of thing. All were either games I had played or watched on youtube, but why these games were so special, was because all of them didn't just jump right into the horror aspect of things, but slowly introduced little hints of horror starting from normalcy, hence therefore creating an atmosphere bit by bit.

http://silenthill.wikia.com/wiki/Lisa_(P.T.)

http://blacknerdproblems.com/silent-hill-pt-review-where-is-my-crucifix/

http://n4g.com/news/1866337/layers-of-fear-review-selectbutton

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ-a_BsLYDM

http://time.com/4216894/layers-of-fear-review/

https://www.greenmangaming.com/games/among-the-sleep/

http://www.gamezone.com/reviews/among-the-sleep-review-don-t-be-a-baby

http://mcetv.fr/mon-mag-gamers-time/allison-road-silent-hills-0207/

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2015/07/01/protoype-game-allison-road-instantly-recalls-p-t.aspx

https://www.vg247.com/2015/08/18/silent-hills-successor-allison-road-headed-to-kickstarter/

http://www.gamerspack.com/2014/08/31/haunted-house-cryptic-graves-reboots-the-granddad-of-survival-horror/

http://www.overclockersclub.com/news/37506/

http://www.gamewatcher.com/games/haunted-house-cryptic-graves/screens

The purpose of this mood board, was to start off by getting an idea of what would be the best layouts and furniture arrangement for a modern Japanese home (with reasonable wealth).