Hello and thanks for joining me! The entire update was intended to reveal some more visuals and also provide details on a crowd-funding campaign for Daemonicon. Certain aspects are still pending on the funding side so it will be posted within a week or so. Please come back and check it out because the project really needs your help and support!
Now, let’s get on with the first part: Visuals!
MONSTROSITIES
I’d like to introduce you to 3 more grisly creations you’ll be running into (or away from) as you explore the haunted world of Daemonicon.
The Razorback demon was inspired by the Chupacabra (I’ve always been fascinated by the legends surrounding that creature) One of the Razorback’s alternate skins is grey and much more alien (along the lines of what a traditional Chupacabra is supposed to look like) A fast and agile demon with a deadly pounce attack and the ability to suck your brains out.
For the ‘Out of Hell’ fans out there, the Flayer is based on the broken-jaw ‘Mindless’ zombie and carries an even longer, rustier machete in hand! The Flayer is a hulking, relentless pursuer.
The Hierophant is a demon much like the ‘Hangman’ and may explain why the latter wears a sack over it’s head! My original design had an embedded porcelain mask in place of the Hierophant’s face. The idea was to get the player to destroy the mask, revealing the hollow you see now (the weak point) but I was afraid the idea would not come across well. It’s up in the air whether or not the mask will return in the final phase.
ACRE, THE PINE STATE!
This is a little section of ‘Acre’, the fictional American State that Daemonicon takes place in. The 3 regions in-game are large and allow for a lot of non-linear exploration. ‘Out Of Hell’ fans will also visit some familiar places like ‘Old Grinny’, although it is a much smaller town this time.
WEAPONS
Here are 7 of the 20+ weapons available to the player. Weaponry types include Melee, Firearms, Explosive/Traps, and Arcane. Some firearms can be upgraded with different accessories while some melee weapons can be altered or sharpened at certain places in the game.
WORKS-IN-PROGRESS
Here are some in-editor shots of one area I am currently working on. There are a lot of neat things going on under the hood in regards to shaders and post-processing effects and all lighting and shadowing is entirely dynamic.
Please note that all following screens are extremely basic builds with a few set pieces and still requires several more visual passes and details before it is complete. My intention is to mainly demonstrate the dynamic lighting and day/night cycle.
None of it came easy since many problems do arise when you start working with world dynamic lighting in any game engine (if you’ve worked with dynamic lighting before, you’ll know what I’m talking about) I’m glad to say though that after a lot of work I’ve set up a lighting system that looks nice and isn’t too costly. Of course, I’ll still be looking for ways to improve and optimize it over time.
I’ve also been much more mindful of the balance between visuals and performance this time around. It’s a struggle to get things to look the way that I want while maintaining an acceptable framerate but it forces me to be more efficient in building my assets and to think outside the box when coming up with ways to fake certain effects, which is a good thing!
Thanks for catching this update and don’t forget to come back in a week or so! See you soon!
I want to wish the community and everyone else out there a safe and happy New Year! 2012 will be a year of new opportunities and lots of work! Here’s hoping the sun doesn’t burn out in December and ends mankind as we know it!
An important update is coming in two weeks so please stay tuned.
I am thrilled to announce DAEMONICON, my new horror-themed project that’s been in the works for the last few months! It is also a spiritual successor to my previous project, Out Of Hell. So what exactly does this mean? There are a lot of details I’d like to discuss, so let’s just get right into it!
First of all, what is Daemonicon?
Daemonicon is a fairly open-ended adventure which will focus more on the survival aspects of horror games such as avoidance of hostiles, securing and protecting shelter, conservation of ammunition, exploration and seeking out food and other supplies. Foraging/hunting wild game in order to stay fed, periodic rest and managing your health are a few interesting aspects that will be incorporated into the game. One of my goals is to really emphasize the ‘Survival’ part of ‘Survival Horror’.
Daemonicon will include many gameplay ideas that I was not able to incorporate into Out Of Hell for one reason or another. A few examples would be a more open-ended playing environment, custom character creation, an RPG-like system complete with classes, inventory, abilities and stats. There are a lot of interesting gameplay features planned but they will be detailed in time as the project progresses.
Many may be wondering, is this a remake of Out Of Hell?
No, this an entirely new piece of Intellectual Property, however, it will borrow some elements and themes from Out Of Hell, which is why I like to label it as a spiritual successor.
After some deliberation and experimentation with different engines, I will be utilizing the UDK (Unreal Development Kit) as it offers both the power and versatility for me to achieve what I need to do rather quickly.
Now, let’s talk about the art.
The very first thing I did for the project was hammer out a design document and flesh it out as much as I could but the second was some concept art. Being an artist, I just couldn’t wait to get into that so I created all the monster models that were needed and then had fellow artist Julia Pishtar (http://juliapishtar.com) sculpt in some truly frightening details on the models.
As you can see by her work, she has a fantastic eye for detail and an exquisite art style. When she was done, I painted the beasts and the results can be seen below:
I am only showing 4 of these models (each monster model has 1-4 different texture variations) since this is only the initial unveiling. I pumped out all of the monster, player, NPC and weapon models during the concept phase to make way for mapping but I’ll have to keep them under wraps for now and reveal them over time because I am a big fat tease.
Please keep in mind, that from now until the final polishing phase, some things may change so please regard these as works-in-progress.
Now, the engine…
I spent the last while further familiarizing myself with the UDK and experimented with a lot of it’s capabilities, trying to see what was feasible, what I could get away with in terms of effects and complexity and what the limits were.
At this moment, I have fully implemented a Day/Night cycle with weather effects, dynamic lighting and shadow (this was a crucial element to the gameplay and was the first thing I set out to do in the engine) Here is an example of one of the initial tests:
Once I was able to implement a day/night cycle, I went on to see what I could do about having a lot of vegetation. One thing that I really wanted to include in Out Of Hell but wasn’t able to (fully, anyway) was trees and vegetation that convincingly moved/swayed in the wind. Another issue that I worried about was being able to have some fairly dense forest while maintaining an acceptable framerate.
I’m happy to announce that I was able to achieve this due to some clever techniques and optimizations.
In the image above, I’ve come up with a method of having large amounts of grass (there’s more around that is not in view) which flows back and forth really beautifully in the wind. Typically for grass like this a texture with an alpha is applied to a plane but in this case, each blade of grass is modeled geometry which I find looks better.
Those who know about Out Of Hell know that a lot of effort and care went into establishing some really atmospheric environments and visuals. It’s my promise that Daemonicon will receive even more effort and attention to detail and you can look forward to exploring more creepy and ambient locales!
Now, about the story and setting…
I will not be revealing much of it at this point other than it taking place in Northwestern America, the presence of many, many Demonic creatures, an artifact called the “Daemonicon” and a military compound known as “The Shelter”. Oh, and for the Out Of Hell fans, one word: Manipulators.
So, when?
As for how long this will take, it is hard for me to gauge at the moment, however, I do aim to take this game commercial and will be exploring funding options very soon. It is my hope that I can dedicate myself to the game full-time so that we can see this thing in action sooner rather than later!
Have a happy Halloween!
And I hope you like what you see so far! Thank you so much for joining me on this unveiling and please head on over to the forums if you have any questions, comments or suggestions!
Halloween is fast approaching! It is the second anniversary of Out Of Hell and to celebrate I will be officially announcing the new horror-themed project I have been working on. I will cover more specific details about it and show some of the artwork that’s been created. This new game should really appeal to the current fans of Out Of Hell and I’m hoping will spark the interest of other horror fans too!
There will be a new temporary place (in the OOH forums) set up for discussion of the new project and I hope to see you all there!
It’s been quite a while since my last update on anything! Firstly I’ve moved the Out Of Hell main site onto this blog which should make things easier to update in the future. I’ll be changing this and that as time goes on but this will be sort of my ‘Projects’ page now and will eventually list the projects that I’m working on or have worked on. Typing in http://www.outofhell.net should also redirect you to here soon.
Lately people have been asking what I’ve been doing.
So as far as games go, I played a lot of City Of Heroes/Villians and Age Of Conan, both of which were really fun but I got tired of the endgame. Also ran through Silent Hill: Shattered Memories (which I didn’t care much for) STALKER: Call Of Pripyat which was one of the best games I’ve played in a long time, some more Blair Witch: Rustin Parr (I repeatedly play through it a few times a year)
Clive Barker’s Jericho which was very nice (especially the monster art) despite some game mechanics, got my hands on a used X-Files: Resist Or Serve for the PS2 (I’m a huge X-Files freak and that game had so much more potential…so much!!!) bought the FMV X-Files game for the PSone at a flea market for 10 bucks, got my hands on used copies of both BW: Legend Of Coffin Rock and BW: The Elly Kedward Tale and finished those (which I didn’t enjoy much and which were nowhere near as good as RP)
I finished the Splatterhouse Remake (which was much better than I thought it would be but I wish it was less humorous and more sinister) and finally got onboard the COD train with Blops. So as you can see I’ve been playing a lot of games in my downtime!
Now, onto the projects!
I’ve begun worked on my next horror game. It’s not a mod or Total Conversion but will be an indie game which I plan to take commercial. At this point in time I’ve got a nice design doc all fleshed out and all monsters and weapons completed (modeled/rigged/textured) Player and NPC’s have been modeled and rigged but are in the process of being textured. Not very much has been made official yet regarding this project but I will say that it is new intellectual property and not a remake of Out Of Hell but will borrow elements from it, it is a game that heavily focuses on the survival aspect of things and it will feature a fairly open world to explore. I’m really excited about it so please stay tuned for more news as I will go official with the project sometime soon.
HEY WAIT! What happened to that other game you were working on?
Ah yes, the medieval tactics game I talked about in a previous post. Unfortunately I had to put it on the backburner some time ago despite making some models for it as I could not find a suitable coder to help in prototyping it. A tactics-type game requires a lot of complex coding (which I wouldn’t be able to ‘wing it’ on) Without at least a basic functioning proof-of-concept I would be stuck with just a bunch of artwork so I set it on the back-burner before committing too much time into it.
Today I edited a small texture file for one of the OOH forumers and so I had to go through my old master files to find it. After going through the old texture packages and then loading up OOH to test out the changes, I ended up playing the thing for about 45 minutes and it was actually great!
It was really something to visit it again and play it from the perspective of a gamer and not a developer. Before, I was always critical of this or that during testing, always thinking that ‘Oh, I should have done this, or that could have been done so much better’ but this time, I went through it and really appreciated the whole package. I found myself really drawn into the the atmosphere and music and was constantly hit by pangs of nostalgia.
It truly is my baby and it really was a great experience working on it. It was a little saddening knowing that it was all in the past, that I could never have the same experience again. It’s sort of like walking past a childhood place or home and remembering how important it was for you during that time of your life. Ah nostalgia!
But now it’s passed and I know that it was merely a stepping stone (important as it was) onto bigger and greater things. Now that I’m aware of this and onto a new project, I’m going to savor every little experience I get from it and perhaps in a couple of years, I’ll write about this new project with the same fondness.
Over the last while (since GDC) I’ve tried setting up other projects but it’s been difficult. One of the projects was a remake of Out Of Hell utilizing the UDK. I created a nice concept map but unfortunately nothing much really came of it due to lack of motivation and a few other issues, so I took a break from the Out Of Hell universe. I plan to revisit it again one day and give it the treatment that it deserves with a full team of experienced artists and coders by my side.
Shortly after that I began toying around with the UDK and set up a foundation for a side-scroller game. I drew up ideas for a mech-themed game, a space SHMUP, a Metroidvania-styled game and even played around with converting Out Of Hell into a sidescroller! At the end of it all I couldn’t come up with anything fresh to add to the genre and inspiration dwindled.
Then I remembered something I created way WAY back in the day, years before Out Of Hell. It was a board game that I designed and built in the mid 90’s that (surprisingly) turned out to be really fun, really addictive and quite unique. I went on to design new boards and updated the game rules over the years and people always came back to it. A few friendships even ended because of in-game events, so you know it’s got to be good!!!!
Work on this new project has already begun and utilizes the UDK. It’s unique, is something that will be worth the time and investment to make and something I believe people will play and enjoy!
I haven’t officially announced the game but it will be a multiplayer, medieval-themed tactics game. I’ve started building art assets for it and am looking into laying down the game foundation. It is again a solo effort (at the moment) but I hope to build a team for it as it progresses. The rest of the details must be left in the dark until an official website is launched.
Honestly, I haven’t been this excited to start a project for years. It’s easy for me to remain inspired and motivated and it’s always something that I wanted to bring into the digital realm. I’ll keep you all posted on any new happenings and I hope you’ll all come along for the ride as you did before!
LONG NGUYEN | Digital Artist & Game Designer 