Topic: Qa'Doth

[BLOOD MONKEY]

Are you going to use these for the player?

[Dracula9]

ZSG, please stop posting shit from my old threads/my old sprites. Their content is old for a reason.

And no, I'll be using this fellow, who for whatever reason came out looking like Harry from Silent Hill.
     


Also, if you do anything while he's smoking, he drops the cigarette. I thought that'd be a neat little gimmick to put in (ignore the bad bounce, the screencap framerate fucked up).

[Dracula9]

Double post but MAI THREAD so meh

As for the sanity effects, I've never played Eternal Darkness (don't hit me) because I never had a Gamecube. However, more than a few people have suggested looking at it for reference material, and I have. In particular, those sanity effects are fuckin' awesome. However, having never played it, I don't know how 'serious' of a game it is. I'd personally love to include fake BSOD screens when in fullscreen and joke deaths and fake empty inventories, but I don't know if those would be too comic for something like this.

And I'm assuming it would be acceptable to use NES-breaking effects for the big sanity effects? I'm a little iffy on it due to wanting to stay console-accurate where I can, but at the same time having stuff come up that would cause a physical console to catch on fire would be a really good way to sell the idea that this big fucking thing right here is so far out of your mental understanding it's literally breaking the game. Thoughts?

[theplottwist]

ZSG, please stop posting shit from my old threads/my old sprites. Their content is old for a reason.

And no, I'll be using this fellow, who for whatever reason came out looking like Harry from Silent Hill.
     


Also, if you do anything while he's smoking, he drops the cigarette. I thought that'd be a neat little gimmick to put in (ignore the bad bounce, the screencap framerate fucked up).

I like this so much, you're hitting all the correct keys here. Once I made a romhack of Mario inside Call of Cthulhu (looseliest inspiration, not like yours that is extremelly true to the source) and I must tell you that the more you screw with the player with fourth wall breaking, the more you'll accomplish it right. And yes, watch some videos from Eternal Darkness. It's a great game with great examples.

One nice sanity effect to have would be "closing" the game, and go back to "Windows", where the person has a Google Chrome screen open on a newsletter site, documenting how Cthulhu has awakened and is destroying the world, like a post apocaliptic news. Then, as the player tries to exit the window, it goes back to the "Desktop" where there is a picture of [insert elder god abbomination here] as the wallpaper. And then the game suddenly returns.

About your graphics, I think you're pulling this off incredibly well for a project start. You already set the tone for the whole thing only with such few graphics (Few in comparison to a whole game's worth of graphics, because I know you already have a shitton of Kadath graphics there ).

If I may suggest some things for the protagonist's smoking:
-Make him throw the cigarette, not just drop it. And make him throw it foward, so it feels more natural and laid back.
-Do not make him smoke always.
-Make the cigarette not light always consistently, prompting him to throw the failed cigarette and take another to light it.
-Make the lighter's flame go off as if the wind had blown it when he's somewhere ghastly/dark/empty.
-Finally, make it be a gameplay puzzle somewhere. Say, he's trapped inside a very dark room full of bottomless pits. The player must stop and wait him light one cigarette, then throw it foward by moving a little so he can see if the cigarette goes down a pit or not.

[Dracula9]

Plot do you realize how much sprite data all that would use up that animation is already 120-something frames as it is-loljk i know it has to happen.

>using cigarettes to find pits
Totally doing this, GREAT idea.

Actually the .gif is just that. In the engine he's coded to spawn a cigarette which has 'thrown' physics in place. I chose to use a gif to show off the sprite more cleanly.

Actually, I would really love to be able to close the game window out and do shit like that. I know GM can do it, as imscared.exe utilizes this, but I've never messed with it so I have a lot of homework to do to get it to work.

I'm actually discussing this shit in Inc. Chat right now, and I've settled on having a ton of endings based on when things happens. For instance, dying in R'lyeh in the very beginning may result in your rescue squad waking Cthulhu and his hordes up in the process (and maybe having a joke screen with Cthulhu humping the planet and calling the player a casual for dying in an area with no enemies, gotta have those joke endings). Defeating the final boss under certain conditions will determine whether you get the ending where he comes back for you, or whether you've truly evaded him. Although there's been talk of a joke ending in which every monster wakes up at once and just fucks up everything. I thought about doing a Silent Hill 3 reference in making a Cthulhu-dog running everything behind-the-scenes, and then the ending has UFOs and tons of other wacky shit wrecking the planet, but do it so whimsically that the player still has to stop and wonder what the hell they're looking at. But again, joke ending, every good horror game has one.

[X]

(and maybe having a joke screen with Cthulhu humping the planet and calling the player a casual for dying in an area with no enemies, gotta have those joke endings)

Thanks for the laugh track! Seriously I laughed hard at this! I can actually see it in my mind it's so damned funny 

[theplottwist]

>using cigarettes to find pits
Totally doing this, GREAT idea.

Not only that. There is actually a lot of uses for this. I used the pit idea as an example, but if fits you, then do it

Actually, I would really love to be able to close the game window out and do shit like that. I know GM can do it, as imscared.exe utilizes this, but I've never messed with it so I have a lot of homework to do to get it to work.

Well, you don't reaaaaaaally have to close the window. You can simply screen capture the user's desktop, and use it as a background for a "level" that you'll set up to look like a corrupted version of the user's desktop. If this is easier to do, I'd say to go for this one instead of actually changing shit on the user's PC.

I've settled on having a ton of endings based on when things happens. For instance, dying in R'lyeh in the very beginning may result in your rescue squad waking Cthulhu and his hordes up in the process (and maybe having a joke screen with Cthulhu humping the planet and calling the player a casual for dying in an area with no enemies, gotta have those joke endings).

You absolutelly need to do this. Like, right about now.

I have a question: How long do you plan on making the game? And if I may be so bold of suggesting: Your game could become a killer metroidvania, with everything taking place on R'lyeh, and have the map change now and them to reflect the warping nature of the city.

And one thing. Here is the romhack I made. I'm not linking it for self promotion. I'm linking because I used some fourth wall breaking and mood that can be useful for you (Like making the emulator activate alone, or fake game over screens).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mnaf1sp9-A

[Inccubus]

I was gonna suggest looking to Eternal Darkness and it's sanity effects for trippy ideas!  I like your thoughts for this though...tying that stuff to the Old Ones because they're just too much!

I second this... or err third? Whatever. Just DO EET! GET TO DE CHOPPA!! Heh, sorry. Was just watching Berserk outtakes.

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

Dracula9, if you need to talk about Eternal Darkness, I know a lot about the game, since I've fully played all three campaigns.

It's not a 'funny' game.  The effects thrown at the player are at times, very serious, but at other times, stupidly funny and would not mind-screw the player, but rather put his/her heart at ease.

Funny effect:
-You walk into a room and your head is decapitated.  However, you can still control your bleeding body.  Your heads falls to the floor and is actually an in-game object, which can be picked up.  Normally, when a player picks up an item it becomes a 4th wall item, hovering and slowly spinning in the air, with a description of the item below (imagine like when Link from LoZ picks up an item like the Ocarina of Time and he holds it up in the air and it floats while spinning, while you get a caption "You received the Ocarina of Time! Here's a description blurb about how to use it".

Except, y'know, you just picked up your own head.  There is no description.  It's bleeding, but it starts to talk while spinning while quoting Shakespeare.

Mindscrew Effect:
-You walk into a room and your head explodes.  Your body falls to the floor as if you had gotten hit by a nasty invisible enemy attack (the game actually has a few instances in which there ARE invisible enemies).  The screen fades to black as if it were heading toward GameOver, but instead, you walk into the room again as if nothing had happened, in a flash.  Your character then says "This... isn't... really happening!"
-You walk into a room.  Normally there is no door-opening animation.  The character just 'loads' with the last door behind them into a room.  There are door closing animations when you leave a room, however.  Except when this room loads, it loads upside-down.  Your character is right-side up, but the room loaded in reverse.  You cannot access the exit doors because they're in the ceiling, facing downwards, and you can't reach them.  After attempting to explore the room, the game 'flashes' into the correct room.  You're back in the proper location.  Cue the "This isn't really happening!" line.
-You're already in a room.  The game works such that if there are no enemies in a room, you can always Save by pausing and going to the Save Menu.  If there are enemies in the room, when you attempt to go save, the Save Game screen says something along the lines of "It's too dangerous to save!".  Well, this 'effect' has a "Save Menu" that resembles the real one, except it says something like "Error saving! No Memory Card!" and if you try to save again it says "Error in memory Card! Now Formatting Card!"... followed by the flash to the room and the "This isn't really happening!" line.  THIS ONE IS SO EVIL!
-Game screen goes black.  Game screens has "Please Insert Eternal Darkness Disc 2".  The game only has one disc.  THIS ONE IS AWFUL IF YOU RENTED THE GAME.

Effects that are purely aesthetic:
-there are flies on the camera lens in the room you're in.  They're moving around the display as if they were on your TV screen, OR in the corners you can see a fly's gigantic legs moving about, juuuust off-camera.  A buzzing sound can be heard coming out of the speakers, but it's subtle.

-atmospheric effects are intensified: You can hear someone walking behind you even though there are no enemies in the room.  The walking steps stop if you turn around.

-you hear scratching, or banging, or crying, behind the walls.

-As your sanity increases, the camera angle for the room slightly starts go go askew.  When you're fully-insane, it's nearly diagonal.

-statues and busts in the game start tracking your movement.

...these are but a few.

[theANdROId]

Dracula9, if you need to talk about Eternal Darkness, I know a lot about the game, since I've fully played all three campaigns.

I'm pretty familiar with the game too for the same reason...willing to answer any questions or whatever.

The effects thrown at the player are at times, very serious, but at other times, stupidly funny and would not mind-screw the player, but rather put his/her heart at ease.

Still, even the funny ones have that, "What the hell?" effect on you.  I mean, you know the BSOD isn't something that would happen on the GC (or do you?!?!), but it still gives you a little skipped heartbeat when it happens.  Especially when it decides to happen during intense moments or tougher enemies.

Mindscrew Effect:
-You walk into a room and your head explodes.  Your body falls to the floor as if you had gotten hit by a nasty invisible enemy attack (the game actually has a few instances in which there ARE invisible enemies).  The screen fades to black as if it were heading toward GameOver, but instead, you walk into the room again as if nothing had happened, in a flash.  Your character then says "This... isn't... really happening!"
...
-You're already in a room.  The game works such that if there are no enemies in a room, you can always Save by pausing and going to the Save Menu.  If there are enemies in the room, when you attempt to go save, the Save Game screen says something along the lines of "It's too dangerous to save!".  Well, this 'effect' has a "Save Menu" that resembles the real one, except it says something like "Error saving! No Memory Card!" and if you try to save again it says "Error in memory Card! Now Formatting Card!"... followed by the flash to the room and the "This isn't really happening!" line.  THIS ONE IS SO EVIL!

The first REALLY screws with you in this game, especially when it's just after dealing with Bone Thieves or Gate Keepers!  Not sure how you might pull it off in an NES-style game, but it's a good one if you could somehow use it.
The second is my favorite effect!  I first saw this one when a friend was playing, had no sanity, and was having a hard time with the level.  When he finally got past the difficult room, he saved and it did this.  I don't know that I've heard so many curses strung together in my life before he realized it was just a mind-screw!

In one particularly creepy aesthetic effect, (and I think I'm remembering this right...) you can hear a woman sobbing in the background.  After awhile, you hear a chainsaw rev up and...well, the crying stops. X-S  It's subtle enough that you might not notice it...I never really noticed until I decided to really go hardcore and play late at night, in my room with all the lights out, and wearing headphones.  It was actually pretty freaky, but it was fun to play that way!

Again, I'm not entirely sure off the top of my head how you'd make them work for the NES-style, but it'd be awesome in connection to the Old Ones!

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

I remember the sobbing woman, yes.  I don't recall there being a chainsaw sound.
"A-haaa...ah-haahaahaaawaaaa...aawaaaahawaahwaaaaaa...**sniff** **sniff**"  I can hear it even now!

And yes, the game had Dolby ProLogic II sound, so I would turn up the stereo and play with the lights off.  CREEEEEEPY!

[theANdROId]

Maybe they were different sounds that just happened to go together that time (Often, I deliberately didn't restore my sanity), but I distinctly remember being under the implication that she was suddenly silenced/murdered.  I remember thinking, "Geez, this game really is freaky!" and laughing at the irony that I was playing such a game, in such a way as I was, while staying in the dorms at a "Distinctively Christian" university!

I must admit though that it has been a while since I've played Eternal Darkness.  I sold my GC (probably shortly before the WiiU was first announced, just as a time reference for you readers) because I owned a Wii and never actually used the GC.  When the WiiU came out, I traded up, not even thinking of the loss of GC playability.  I'm still kicking myself for that and just haven't gotten around to buying an old GC yet.

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

I can play Gamecube ISO's on my Wii-U.  I've lost NOTHING!
I kept my Wii though since it can also do this, and use it to backup my discs to harddrive.

But yes! Sanity effects were great in that game.

[Dracula9]

Yeah, I've read about a bunch of those, but to hear a first-person description of the effect rather than a textbook one is much more helpful.

Also, updated Protag's delicious cancer-stick animation, with special thanks to -Eric- over on Inc. for fixing his leg and some arm positioning.


Feels more natural this way, I think.

[Claimh Solais]

I've been getting annoyed with all these "retro-styled" games coming out lately, but for some reason, I'm really drawn to the visuals of this. It's got this real... dark, gritty, noir-ish look to it. The protagonist seems like a mix of Harry from Silent Hill and the dude from Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars to me, kinda gives him this whole mysterious look.

Not to mention that darker Cthulu looks fucking freaky as shit.

Anyway, it's looking to be something a little more fresh, even in the visual sense. Keep up the good work!