BLOCKOUT to Final
Pre-Alpha
The development of SENSUS began here, since this project was being developed by myself and Adam we didn't have any programmers on our side so I took the roles of Programmer and Technical Designer to code the game from scratch myself. The first block out I whipped together was a small area that consisted of blocks and stairs so I could code the players movement. I wanted the player to feel human, to provide that realistic feeling I modified Unity's Headbobbing system.
I blocked out this scene to understand the sense of scale and weight in the player movement, and the stairs of course to practice smooth inclines and declines rather than the jaggered bob.
Perfecting the player movement took me about a week before finalizing it (of course there was still a few bugs that lurked which I ended up fixing around the end of beta)
But I didn't always spend my time just coding the player, I needed heavy inspiration to help me build my philosophy behind SENSUS, so I spent my weekends watching Movies, TV and playing single player horror games.
Which actually helped me a lot during development, the inspiration I gathered from all that media made the development much more of a breeze than I had hoped.
Also here is a grabbing mechanic I did that never made it to the final game. :)
Alpha 0.1
After a week of pre-production and another week of coding the player I was finally able to move on to designing my environments. For SENSUS I designed 3 out of 4 environments and heavily assisted Adam on his environment design as well, but I'll mainly focus on the first environment here to keep the blog short.
Each area in the game is connected via Hallways that foreshadow the next area. The first environment of the game was an Apartment Complex which was subtly inspired by an episode from the TV anthology series"Black Mirror".
Starting with the Hall, I wanted the player to feel comfortable and warm going into the first area so the transition into a tense and eerie environment was more unexpected and surprising.
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I wanted to layout the Apartment in a fashion so the player can follow the loop structure, where things subtly change in the environment each time the player walks through a door, which of course was heavily inspired by Hideo Kojima's P.T.
Following this structure was found to be really difficult however, I was blocking out a more open area that wasn't entirely narrow, and to achieve this loop structure I needed to help the player understand that walking through a certain door would change the environment.
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Alpha 0.2
Continuing my work on the Level Blockout, I modeled some assets for my apartment's kitchen to give the more of a homey feel in the scene, under time constraints however I utilized the Unity Asset Store as well as sourcing some third party websites for 3D models so I didn't have to spend too much time on the art side of things.
Sourcing art from the internet was rather tiresome however as most 3D models aren't built for Game Engines in particular, so I had to be careful by investigating the asset's poly count and texture quality.
This was also a great time for me to experiment with Unity's lightmapper which greatly improved quality and performance. Although this did ended up being my biggest down fall, I spent far too much time making changes and lightbaking the scene when I should've been lightbaking per milestone for build review with our mentor, which was a great lesson I learnt after the development of SENSUS.
I also had a little too much fun with the hallway and finished polishing and texturing it way too early rather than working on the whole scene.
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Beta 0.1
Some major changes was being made around this period, making the apartment smaller and placing in more props for that home feel I'm trying to achieve. It was around this time I really started to put time into the overall atmosphere.
I wanted to get that home feel with tension even with a greyboxed environment which is why I spent so much time into the lighting, props and audio.
It was that door you see in the far back of the kitchen I wanted players to walk through to initiate the looping structure. Over time I had coded in about 7 different loops, all of which something would change in the environment starting small and progressing to more obvious changes.
From play testing with our mentor it was no easy task, I needed to figure out a way to silently scream at the player that, that was the way to progress the game.
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Beta 0.2
Going into gold, the scene really started to come together with my scene getting more comfy yet further more mysterious. That ugly yellow box you see there is one of my many invisible triggers for my looping structure.
When the player first enters this area, I want them to take in the environment and get themselves familiar, and if they're paying enough attention they'll notices the subtle differences. But for players to be paying in the first place I needed to make the area interesting enough for players to care which I think I achieved in the end watching players play through the game.
I also added this lamp.
This lamp single handedly changed the entire outcome of the first 5 minutes of the game.
When players feel like they've seen enough of the apartment they move onto the kitchen door which initiates the door loop structure I wanted so much.
However when players walked through the door the first time they had felt that the door's purpose had been fulfilled which wasn't the case. So after walking through the door the first time this lamp would appear flickering onto the door, this was my way of screaming at the player "This door is how you progress the game".
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Beta 0.3
Continuing my work on the scene I was able to grasp that comfort feeling I was looking for and I was able to achieve to transition that atmosphere into tension and dread the more often the player had walked through that kitchen door.
Although no one was really a fan of my Ceiling Light I had done there, it almost felt impractical with the heavy shadows it casted onto the environment. So I had to change it something that still made sense within context but at the same time capture those shadows that cast across the environment.
Gold [Final]
And finally going into the final build.
I had achieved my goal of presenting the player with a warm and comfortable home but slowly transitioned that feeling of comfort into tension and uneasiness.
Keep in mind I was behind two other areas that SENSUS features which I spent time on, while making the apartment. But I wanted to make this blockout history about the Apartment since I spent the most time in it. Maybe I'll make a blockout history about those two some day.
If you're wondering, the emotion I was trying to portray with the apartment was stages of Depression. Walking through the same halls of the same environment but with changes happening all around you.
Each loop the player goes through is another stage of depression someone experiences.
When the player goes through all Seven loops of the apartment a door will open in the lounge which presents a stair case that descends into darkness.
This is the process of the player descending further into depression, at the bottom of stair case is a sewer pipe with a giant anchor inside it, which is meant to represent the weight depression can have.
You descend further into depression, and that descend is weighed down by what feels like an anchor.
I could almost write a novel about the story I'm trying to tell with the apartment but I figured I should give the short version here haha. I didn't want to talk too much about the Seven loops and what they hold within them because I think its something that should be experienced for the first time without it being spoiled. You can download SENSUS here.
