TLTTM Postmortem

Postmortem

The Light Through the Mists was a Student Project at SCAD and my first foray into Blueprinting! Overall I'm quite happy for a first attempt but I'd certainly like to change things, especially now with my skills.  Development started relatively early on with concepting. It was around Halloween so I decided to go with a horror game. A friend was wearing a T shirt of a human skull with Deer antlers and that was the inspiration for the monster. I'm not much of a game artist, so the Unreal Assets store was a good friend in getting the setting, mansion, and various bones and furniture all over the place. 

From there I looked at the Genre conventions of Horror and really analyzed what worked and what doesn't when it comes to your traditional "First Person Flashlight Horror Game". I Found, almost universally Everyone, and I mean Everyone hates the Flashlight with no battery life that recharges/ needs batteries every 5 seconds. so I needed to fix that. I had the idea to make the Monster a thing that damages players with a red light, so I decided to make light a danger. 

In many horror games light can seem like a boon, but good horror games know that having a flashlight in a dark room can be scarier than just being in the dark. I decided to expand that concept and make the flashlight a dangerous but necessary tool, adding in depth to the game. Players have unlimited flashlight battery, but activating the flashlight draws the monster to the players position, putting them in more danger. Players then have the personal choice of when they turn on the flashlight and risk the anger of the creature. 

For the general gameplay loop I took a bit of a page from Resident Evil, collect a certain number of keys to get out. This was a good choice because it allowed for me to generate specific moments of tension in the game and generate a consistent, well designed level with flow. For example, when attempting to reach one switch, a fallen bookshelf blocks the players path, teaching the player about the ability to crouch. After ducking under the bookshelf, the Monster then enters the house and the danger skyrockets. The creature then begins to make it's way to the players location, but on the way out, players now notice a table they can crouch under to slip by the creature. 

The Monster itself is a point that I would like to go back and do more work on, when I get the time. While the monster works well, and I incorporated some excellent sound design (Elk Screams are quite creepy) the AI itself is a little potato brained. As I said this way my first foray into Blueprinting and I decided to jump into the deep end. While I've certainly improved in terms of AI (see SPITE) I somewhat solved my problems. 

The AI for the Monster was relatively simple to start out with. Patrol a path and hunt the player when they turned on the flashlight, as it dealt Damage Over Time with it's light. To get the patrolling I created a long long list of Target points I placed around the houses Navmesh and had it make it's way from one point to another, with a short delay in between each point. While this worked good enough, it would act interestingly when the monster finished the Hunt. Instead of returning to the nearest target point, it would restart the patrol from scratch. In Addition the Monster had a hard time keeping a constant eye on the Player when hunting them, and even afterwards. To solve that now I have a Rotator (thanks again SPITE) that could keep the enemy "locked on" to the players location to increase the threat. 

Hopefully once I get the time I'll be able to go back into this project and give the Monster a proper Behavior Tree and refactor some of my more jank code from way back when. In addition I'd love to expand this game a bit more, as it's a touch short and I feel like I could introduce some more interesting mechanics or enemies down the line, as well as explore some level design. but for now, and for my first Blueprint game, I'm quite happy with the end result.