Lead Designer Blogpost 3

Hey everyone! Cody Philbrook here to deliver another update on Menacing Mansion’s design! It's crazy to think that it's been 6 weeks of development. So far we have gotten some amazing props from our 3D artists, fantastic levels from our designers, and tireless work from our programmers. If you would like to check out in specific all that my amazing team is doing please check out our producer, Justin Amians blog here. 

So the goal for the build this week was getting our procedural generated path implemented into the game. This required a lot of systems to be designed for our level designers to be able to properly block in their levels and get them implemented into the system. The main goal for the level designers is to have each room look different so that the player can identify if they have been in the room before. To do this I worked with my programmer to create a system where the level designers would place a prop spawner down. This prop spawner shows a mesh preview of the model and an arrow to show its front facing elements. This spawner allows the model to pull its texture from a list. With this system created the level designers will be able to organize the props and finish blocking in the rooms for the player. The player will now be able to walk into a room that is more eclectic. Nothing really matches but it all meshes together.

With the maze generation implemented we moved onto flushing out the picture frames scare. I wanted the player to be drawn to the image. In order to achieve this we added a focus script that caused the player's camera to zoom in on the picture. When the image is fully in focus the picture changes for a split second, triggers a sound effect and flash of light in order to startle the viewer. 

Based on the data from our playtest form (seen below), 10 out of the 11 playtesters noticed that the portrait changed.  Of those ten, nine playtesters said that they were drawn to the image. The last question on the picture framed asked the player to rate the emotions they felt when the picture changed from not worried (1) to deathly terrified (10). 30% of our playtesters rated the experience a 3, while not very high did give me crucial feedback, the picture change is not scary enough. Looking forward, I am planning on adding an additional component in order  to build tension. I will then test if the picture frame scare  actually scares the player when they have to deal with something. I don’t want to spoil anything at this point so be sure to read my next design blog and play the most recent build.

Moving on, the maze system that we have implemented into the game is able to both expand and contract the more rooms types added to the game the longer the maze can get. Due to still being in the early stages of development I wanted to ensure that the player wasn’t running through an endless maze of the same room over and over and thus I reduced the size of the maze for this build to a 5x5 grid. In order to break up the maze I also added in some empty rooms as placeholders for the mortuary that didn’t quite make it into this build. 

Based on this feedback I was able to determine that all of the playtesters were able to get through the maze in roughly 5 minutes. My goal is for the player to be in the ten to fifteen minute range. With more levels completed we will be able to increase the size of the maze which will increase the amount of time the player spends in the game.

With the core gameplay loop solidified we are able to start working on the UI elements for the main menu and credits. This has allowed us to have a complete game play loop so that the player has a start and end to the game. Now that we have the systems that the core loop needs we can focus on getting feedback on scares for the player and I have directed my team to focus on those elements next.

Looking forward towards the next build we will be implementing a few scares. The peeper will spawn and look at the player through doorways, The player will be able to look for consumables for the lighter and flashlight, as well as hearing voices. We will also add hallway prefabs to the level designers arsenal to break up the rooms so that the player isn’t wandering from square box to square box. I believe that this will allow us to build the nervous tension in the player that I am seeking. The dangers of the mansion are increasing stay tuned for more in the next designer blog.