This time I won’t show a new tool, but a new feature for our good old Level Editor: Decals. These are used mainly to add nice details to the level without much sweat. Here is a little video demonstrating how these can be used.
Puzzles in horror games Part 6: On “brain boosters” and hint systems
In most adventure games, the player takes the form of some type of Sherlock Holmes character and here one runs in to a problem: How does the player become Mr Holmes? How can she be given Sherlock’s wit and problem solving abilities, just like she is given Kratos’ strength? That’s what the rest of this blog entry will be about.
Horror Tip: [REC]
This is a spanish little gem in the “first person documentary horror” genre, same as the first Blair Witch movie (which I have not seen by the way).
Parallax trix
Since many seemed to enjoy the parallax mapping showed off in the material editor, I just wanted to show off the more advanced way of doing it and also giving some explanations.
I’m a Material Boy
Here’s the HPL Material Editor, our latest addition to the tool suite. This is what we use to create, edit and preview materials with. In a nutshell, a material is what’s gonna determine how an object is going to look like in the engine.
Puzzles in horror games Part 5: Things to consider when designing puzzles
Figuring out a good puzzle is often a hard and tricky process. Sometimes a puzzles presents itself from story and environment naturally, but more often it is put in just to add some gameplay and/or slow the player down.
Puzzles in horror games Part 4: Backtracking and why it is essential
The fourth part in the puzzle series will be about a specific “feature” that I am sure you are all aware of. Backtracking
Puzzles in horror games Part 3: Why physics puzzles is not the “promised land” of adventure games
In the previous blog some problems with puzzles in adventure games where discussed. It was also mentioned that a major culprit in all of these where that many adventure games do not have a coherent system for doing interactions, like for example a Super Mario game. A nice way of solving this and still allowing a varied set of possible actions might seem to be physics.
Horror Tip: Elevated
This is a pretty unknown short film from the guy that made Cube (one of my favorite horror movies) and it has a lot in common with that movie. Both films are based on a fear of the unknown, have tense psychological drama and feature a very limited set.
Blog layout updated
I just made the blog a little wider and hopefully this will make it more readable than before.
