No Human Being Would Stack Records Like This

Shot of the records room from the demo we're working on. The scary part is that medical records are often kept in huge stacks, not unlike this one. We don't have a paperless system yet, and medical paperwork is something that seems to breed in the dark corners until it reaches the ceiling.

Currently working on a door puzzle, which involves severed limbs and growing vines, plus some more medical trickery. Should have some images of that one soon.


Scary picture for the week is this nice abandoned subway station. Not sure if it's supposed to be the end of the line, but the track seems to lead straight to a concrete wall.

Can't find the source on this one, it's being offered as a wallpaper on many sites.

Creepy Photo Day

Creepy Inspirational Photo Day

 

 

 

Been on vacation the last few days so I don't have a game photo ready for this week. Instead I present a creepy photo:

 

 

 

This is from an abandoned theme park called "Nara Dreamland" in Japan. The twisted spiral into fog gives a nice effect for the eye. The game is going to have a roller coaster theme puzzle in it, which I'm in the processes of locking the design down. Though I think the old wooden ones have a bit more charm and would be a better fit.

 

You can read more on the source of this image here:

http://www.abandonedplaygrounds.com/nara-dreamland-the-abandoned-gigantic-amusement-park-of-japan/

 

 



 

ReplayFX, indiedb

We're happy to be attending ReplayFX next year, which is a pinball tournament held in the convention center in Pittsburgh, August 2015. We'll be at a booth showing off the demo for people to play. The event is mostly a pinball theme but there will be other gaming rigs as well as indie gamers.

http://replayfx.org/

Also, we've joined the indieDB community!


http://www.indiedb.com/games/shades-of-sanity

Some older Screenshots

Some older screenshots of the bedroom area. Been working with the cells so long I forgot how nice it looks. Need to return to it someday.

Art work Update

Got some art from some fine talent lately. First one is a sculpt of the arms from the "arm puzzle." Alex is featured here, who also sculpted the Rachel, Janet and Stalker models. 

These are the arms that will be holding a cell door shut. They're a bit mutated, combining both flesh and plant mater. 

Steve gave us an update of a nicely done box. These will be used to store piles of patient's personal effects. I can even individually label these with an overlay effect.

Andrew gave us this model of a wall hanging blood pressure machine. Hard to see from this shot, but the display has glass cover. You'll be able to squeeze the ball and play with the need to some extent. 

Tyler is working on a model for what I call the "Dark Man" for the cell level. This is the first iteration so there will be some final morphing. 

Wasn't originally a character, he (she???) is just something that spawned from redoing the cells level about four times over now. Before I tried to do a smoke effect but couldn't come up with something that worked, then I tried a skeleton model. Decided to try something based a bit more on reality. Horror needs some grounding to the real world or else it just becomes silly. 

Next time I'll post footage of the first puzzle. 

Tech Update

The Normal Buffer Overlay Shader

Keith added a new shader that allows us to blend in a normal map into the background. The top left postage stamp shows the normal buffer blended in with the additional overlay map. This opens up the door to add a lot more character to the environment at minimal cost. 

So now we can add random cracks, water damage, bullet holes, and pretty much any surface detail without having to create entire new maps for each section. 

Design and Tools....

Since we got more help now, gotta spend more time on design and organization rather than pretty pictures at the moment. Can't stress enough how important a detailed plan is, and how current tools just seem to be so lacking. Google doesn't organize it's documents well, and I ended up spending more time looking for documents than editing them. And of course the team would all need to be added, shared, and what not, plus then you quickly run into space issues. I made a 3 page document that somehow turned into 27 megs! It was as if the images were being stored 5x over. 

So the solution? Why, create my own design system. Seems somewhat neurotic, but I've been coding for 20 years and sometimes it's easier to create a wheel than deal with the flaws of what's out there.