Downside Evil

Hi Forum!

Today i will present to you my project ive been working on now for 1 month!
Right now the title is called "Downside Evil" but the title can stil change.

This game will be a Horror-Survival Game ala Resident Evil (1-3).
I always wanted to create a game like those good old Resident Evil games, so you will probable see some likeness to it.

Im working totally alone on this game. Altough i get alot of help here in this Forum!

I only got the A7 Extra Edition, so i cant use shaders etc. so my goal is not to have a game that looks up-to-date, but i try to make a good, scary atmosphere.

Right now i have only 2 Screens (more will follow), but maybe You can tell me already your opinion about it what you think!
For bigger pictures, please visit my website and go to --> Galerie 1
































PS: if you visit my website, have patiance that only the button for "Galerie 1" is working right now.
http://home.tele2.at/Homeofchris/

Thank you all!
PPS: Questions, critics, and comments are welcome.

In the first picture :
The barrels are too lighten, make a darker texture for them
to have same ambient lightening as the level !

Change the character you have the same than someone else on a BLitz Program that also make an Horror game :
Blitz Game

Anyway looking good
Keep up the good work !

i am impressed. this doesnt happen alot.
feel happy.

you could become big fast. keep up!

the level design looks like that of kabus 22, very nice.

well, thanks first for the first opinions of you guys. they are really iportant for me.


ok thanks for the suggestions, i will do that asap, and i already change the redlight in picture one to an dynamic light wich looks better already. the barrels are next


yeah kabus 22, great game i think, it was also an inspiration for me after i saw wat is possible with this engine !

Thanks Guys!
more comments welcome

Looks very tight and professional, want to see more

agreed great ork I also got 3dgs A7 Extra but cant reach that quality.
is your level built out of blocks or by models?

wow! Thank you so much Kiwiboy!


u too aztec thank you!
you guys really motivate me alot!
More picture, and information about the game will follow ( i hope soon)!

@aztec: Most of my level is built of blocks, i just love em, bcs if i use models, they just wont look good with the rest of the (Block-)Enviorment. is ther a trick or hint how entities fit better to the level light??

Hey it looks pretty good, keep it up!

@rachet: afaik that model is sold on some model site, and it's possible to see it in more than 1 indie game

Thanks!
Yes i bought that model on 3D4ya. but i will modify the model more and more. like in my picture i removed already his cloves and beard :P

Yep , bring him some commandos upper suite like in Resident Evil

I like the leveldesign and the texturing quite a bit, but the light needs some work in my opinion. Try to place several lightsources per light in the level and play around with different lightcolors and lightranges.

About models not fitting into the level: Try to import every model you don´t want to be moved as level geometry and for dynamic ones, play around with hard and soft edges and stencil shadows (which will definatly be a bit tricky in combination with hard edges on some models, but should be possible with some extra polygons :P)

hmmm, i think i try that already yesterday, i go to WED, inport -->MDL format, then i will see the model just as like blocks, so far so good, but wen i want to compile the level, the compiler give me alot of errors and wont continue.
Other possibility? THanks!

Lovely...

Resident Evil .
Looks very cool! It'll be amazing if you're using Commercial for that!

I thought it was really free !
No i won't buy it , caus i prefer to keep moeny for other things, and with Silo i already have a very powerfull and fast tool to do models.

uhm, if ur talking about my game. it will be, should be ever finish, for free ofcourse!!

Sorry !
I posted in wrong thread.
Nope it was a reply for modeling tool !

For you rgame , if you reach as good quality as Kabuto game, sell it !

hi ratchet!

i need ur opinion again!
Does the barrels look better now?


new picture big

Indeed ; they are lot more integrated in the environment with
good simulated lightening.

Now do the same for the pipes on the wall :
it's like they have no lightening or a too constant ;
compared to the ambient lightening you need to make a darker texture like the barrels !!

What i like in your level , you have put some good details and models , it's not only walls you have.

Keep up the work and design

like that??


bigger

Yep

Lot better !
But personnaly , i had make lot more darker in the top instead and more light near your white neon model light.
That's more, more light near the lights.

Well anyway , now that's look lot more integrated lightening and a good level.

Keep up the levels !

hi again Forum!

today i updated my website, so now the button for Game-, and Development Informations are available, also 1 new screenshot.












Go check it out !!! --> http://home.tele2.at/Homeofchris/

Cool level and details on it

If you have some framerate not too bad , perhaps you could add some patches of grass or flowers/plants in the green grass planes ?
Or perhaps it's not an abandonned place and the grass is cut every week !

Keep up the level design !

looking very very nice so far

I have made codes for my own horror survival game too... never gotten away at art though.
Maybe I'll have to pick it up again :P
(had movement in, blended animations, camera system (with collision), could examine objects and all was coded using structs :P)

good job so far, keep it up!

regards,

The design is so cool! Keep it up!

Hi again all!

Today I uploaded a new screenshot.
This time from a inside-level.












bigger

if u wanna see more of it, check out my website --> http://home.tele2.at/Homeofchris/

Looks good so far, I would add dirt to the environment it looks to clean. For the character model he looks out of place and doesn't really fit the whole thing.

You should really define what kind of guy he is and why he is in the situation.

yes maybe a little more dirt i will add.
and the player model will change!

the last screen is a total copy of the STARS hall in RE3 :P

But i really like it so far

regards,

the dark patchh on the floor below the caution door is weird. other than that, great work!

Good textures and detailled level design.

Bring on the zombies !

Hi all!

i just upload a update of my last screenshot, and want your opionion about if it is a little improvement.













bigger!!! <---
Please have patiance that i have no video or anything more yet.

I think the only thing which is not fitting the scene is the playermodel itself it look too low-poly compared to the other models and the textures (they look really good I gues they are pretty big)

regards

Aztec

Hi there again!

after a long time, i will show u some news about my game
well its not really "news" its just a video i created, showing me walking around at the beginning of the game.
some infos: its early version, so please have patiance with some major bugs, like hearing the rain even inside etc
and please ignore the gaps in the video, FRAPS allow me 30 seconds record only.
commends are welcome!

Thanks for your time!!

[video:youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_XHNTOTQMA[/video]

WOW!! Excellent level designing. and really good lightning.
i wish could be so good at level designing.
keep up the good work.

Seconded; the level design is really good, I like the lightning; The camera movement is great.
THe animations could be blended tough, and the aiming laser looks a bit strange because he's coming from the models center, but that are minor issues;
I also like the equipment menu.
All in all, very good work so far.

i think it's not a laser but some sort of debug/development helper.

Keep it up, looks nice so far

correct. its not an "actual" laser in the game
as i said, stil alot bugs, and work to do also the blending movement is bad.

excellent atmosphere and very good level designing.

Awesome level design, but why does the laser pointer come out of.... his "wiener"? O_o

WoW WoW all I can say - I am sure I would buy it! How you made those great looking camera effects? Great!

Just one thing: Why there is a liser with the knife^^?

well, as i said b4, this game is stil in development and far from beeing finished. the red line or laser is not an actuel laser for the game. its just a development help for the weapon code.
And thank you all for those really good commends so far!!

yeah, im working to help dev on the weapon code and that was just used for debugging info. I actually feel bad because I recently got a new job and i think im holding chris back because im working so slow on the last few clients i have.

Cool, it almost feels that I'm watching a horror movie than a game.
But somehow, it looks like Resident Evil games and somehow it share the same aiming problem(where we cant see what we're shooting at)...
And like other sais, the game level design and lighting is just awesome...

looks nice, except the crotch laser. ambience is very RE creepy. I hate to say clone, but it feels like a side mission, kinda like a spinoff game. thats not a bad thing i guess. but IMHO, capcom has ruined the RE franchise after RE3, so another survival horror game doesnt interest me. Now, this is no way a disrespectful observation, just a suggestion. i hope you create something more original to set your project apart from what weve seen from RE. Good luck, and i am looking forward to seeing more.

its ok u say clone, thats wat i wanted to create. and u totaly right about saying after Resident evil 3, capcom ruined RE. and yes, i stay 100% to the original!! as i quote myself here...

[quote=chris_oat] This game will be a Horror-Survival Game ala Resident Evil (1-3).
I always wanted to create a game like those good old Resident Evil games, so you will probable see some likeness to it./quote]

for the record, you are doing a great job if thats what you were looking to do. i am impressed!

Hey Community!

its been a while since I show something from my project.
Well that for two reasons, first because I not developed from September 09 til january 10 and second, since that I really work hard on it again.
Let me give HELGHAST a special thanks here, because he was the one who "revive" my project in writing this amazing weaponcode and alot more stuff for me.
Well now it is time to show you my new video...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kni83J5tH18
Please note, im not a good video editor nor good video director
but I stil hope you all like the scenes you can see...
I also had timepressure to finish this video beacuse I promised everyone it will be finised before my vacation
Sometimes the bad FPS in the video is only when I record with FRAPS.
Im going now for 3 weeks to the philippines !!!

PS: All comments (good or bad) accepted.

Looks good, but you should really reconsider the pacing it looks very slow. And the main character is to flat and has no real personality. The main character is the most important thing, I don't no if this is the final one but by now it is to generic.

Other than that Iam looking forward to see some enemies maybe you try something else than zombies.

Did you slow down the video?
If not, well, then I'd recommend you speeding up the whole stuff a bit, the animations, the movement speed; I know you are aiming for a rather slow pace, like the old Resident Evil games, but it really looks too slow here.
Apart from that, very cool looking, the atmosphere is great;
The weapon handling looks also good from what I can see.
I'm looking forward to see some actual combat.

yes i know it looks way too slow in the video. Wen i record with FRAPS it slows it dramaticaly down. The game without FRAPS runs good. sorry for that...

Well, then, cool - so its even better than it looks in the vid.

For the case that the slow animations are caused by the bad fps you or your scripter probably forgot to make use of the time_step variable

IMO you have to tweak your color a lot, it´s rather too colorful.
Try to use specific color paletts for different level parts like Resident Evil does it:


Also the animations itself arn´t perfect yet. Add f.i. a 'turn around'-animation.

Looks like an excellent start. I must say the movement looks downright clunky, a turning animation would help as Hummel suggested. Color didn't bother me at all; the environments seemed seemed to add a nice bit of tension.

Oh and remove the "There's blood on the door" dialogue. we can see that lol
Unless it's within your characters nature to state the obvious. I never ever see much personality in horror games, at least not from the protagonist. The Suffering managed to create a deep protagonist without much dialogue from him. I thought that was pretty cool.

the only thing that really bothered me:
way too many camera switches. you can barely walk 2 steps without a change of view.
i think this will crush your gameplay a lot and it will start to get annoying very fast (cant see enemies, hard to control, get pushed out of the view when hit or attacked ....).
try to reduce that with smart level design.

i would also rework the textures to fit a color layout. if you use photos you will either have to set a "null lightning" for all textures and use the game engine lights later on, or you will have to rework and tint them to match a color scheme upfront.

i liked the old ResidentEvil games a lot. and since i am not alone here, you might get quite a bit of interest generated all over the web.

cheers

Irrespective of Resident Evil´s awesomeness there is indeed an aspect where you have the chance to make something better than the king: enemy AI!
These stupid bastards don´t stop to walk even when there is a wall in front of them.

PS: don´t forget the ammo cartouche physics with corresponding sounds, was imo a nice little feature in Resi

Hi, I'm the scripter involved in this project
After checking the movie, this was my first thought exactly, however, after checking, it turned out that I already made use of it... i'll look further, It's a retro-fitted code, so I might have overlooked something xD


I am a great fan as well of the whole RE-series.
I will be responsible for the AI too, I will definatly try to make something good out of this...
If interested, have a look here and scroll down, I have already started working on some A* system

http://www.designorhea.com/pages/Downside_Evil/

regards,

now really, resident evil 4 took the genre into a new era and you want to bring it back to the 90ys?
im all for good work and stuff but really, change the pace and camera angles...

IMO they killed the feel of resident evil when they introduced 4. 1,2 and 3 were awesome and the fixed camera, small hallways, the music, etc gave you the 'oh shit, what's around the next corner?' vibe.

Downside Evil looks really good, and you have really captured the 'true' resident evil theme.

old resis -> survival horror + adventure = awesome
resi 4 -> horror + action = an other kind of awesomeness
resi 5 -> action = good game but not awesome

...so keep the style

meh, idk, not my type of game, not that others wont like it but like total control but we'll see

Good Work

very nice,but i think i saw that hero somewhere!!

Looks great man , definitely , RE4 and 5 really messed up the resident evil formula, I don't think they should even be called resident evil , specially the 5th one. Good luck on the game , and I hope resident evil goes back to making real resident evil games and forgets about making action games, or does both rather than forgetting one. I like rambo myself , and rambo with zombies itself is an awesome idea , and so is RE5 , but , it's not Resident Evil.

To the whole old style vs new style debate, I think that you should approach this issue from another point of view. The main reason why the fixed cameras of the old Resident Evil worked was because you had the whole thing on Play Station but even there the controls where clunky, if you now think about how you normally control games on PC you will see the problem.

So if you can make the controls work that they come out not to clunky than this old style will be not problem.

"The main reason why the fixed cameras of the old Resident Evil worked was because you had the whole thing on Play Station but even there the controls where clunky"
The controls were perfect for a survival horror game. The newer REs are more action than survival horror , a shame really.

the old control works perfect with a keyboard also - I played it with emulator

i have played (resident evil 3 nemesis)several years ago(in year 2001 i think),man that game was something,i loved the atmoshere,it was one hell of horror game,the puzzles in that game where amazing.but after some years,capcom released RE4,i got it,man that was disappointing.

Well sales numbers show that Resident Evil 1-3 were never successful on the pc and even the devleoper themself said that the main reason for changing the game from RE 4 to now were the controls. And by the way it doesn't matter if you somehow manage to control a game with the keyboard the question is are you using the devices you have to control the game wisely that everybody can play it. Some people really think that nostaligia is really all you need even if is clunky Iam going to pretent that it was amazing sorry guys doesn't work.

It also doesn't add anything to help the guys who make the game it just some fanboys posting about how in the old days eveything was better.

Who ever is responsible for the game controls I maybe have a solution on how you can keep the old style camera but have the controls suited for PC. If you haven't thought about it yet.

You contact me via pm or email.

Hi interested Community!

well, im on Vacation right now and only now i read all the comments. So far most of them are positive
Here some facts/answers:

Camera Angle: Will not be changed (should feel like RE 1-3, fixed cams and RE CV, moving cams.

Controls: right now the controls feels like Devil May Cry, i asked Helghast if we should add a "real" RE control option, but for now we focus on other stuff.

Thanks to all for the interest in Downside Evil.
after my vacation i will work on it again with new inspiration and ideas to keep you interested.

- Chris


*I will add this to my signature!!!*

Haha, nice 1!

hello guys !

I just inform anybody who is interested in my game. I bought A7 Commercial and from now on my game will have shaders !!