White Night - Total Conversion v1.1

[Tanshaydar]

Yes, reading Frictional Games' blog educated me a lot, really.
However, I find it really hard decision to put player in protagonist's shoes.

In White Night, you will be playing as David, which is seemingly an ordinary man without any memory.
Now, how can an ordinary player can sympathize such a man? Furthermore, is it really necessary?

In this case, the character player can sympathize may not be the protagonist. It could be an antagonist or even a side character. In White Night, I won't try to force player to feel David. I won't force player to feel anything. Every single player can feel different about characters, events and story. Everyone can sympathize different characters' different sides, or not sympathize at all.

What I am trying to do is not evoking some emotions. I am just trying to open a new window, to show people the "what if" side of their lives, what if they were to lose any memory they had, what would happen to their perception of 'reality'. What would they believe, or who would they believe.

I believe somehow I managed to bend this questions into the story, while story is growing greater.

[plutomaniac]

Mmm, nice point of view. Sympathize someone else and not the protagonist. Not sympathize at all? Well, then how the player can really immerse into the story and get to understand the characters? I guess that's up to you to show me and make it possible in White Night.

I am actually keeping notes from Thoma's articles and that will help me a lot when I really start to focus on the story. Playing WN 2-3 times will also give me another perspective of storytelling.

You know, something similar happened at Amnesia too. At the end you realize that Daniel is not that good. He killed many others in order to save just himself. I liked that. I liked that the ending could be 4 different situations and also I'm a supporter of the bad endings.

I believe that:

1) It is not necessary for the ending to be good.
2) It is not necessary for the protagonist to win in the end in someway.
3) It is not necessary for all the questions to be answered just for the shake of it.
4) It is not necessary for the protagonist to die at difficult moments to remember the player that it is a horror game.

[Tanshaydar]

This turns out to be a great discussion

I believe to immerse player in the story, sympathizing a character is not necessary at all. Key point is to find a fragment of yourself in the game. For example, I haven't sympathized Daniel in Amnesia at all. Alexander was more of an interesting character for me.

Create a sympathy for a character is the most straight-forward way to immerse a player in a game; however, no one can guarantee that player will find himself/herself in this character. It needs a very hard work to create a character from scratch that have a deep characteristic. Most of the games and movies are plain trash because they don't have any character depth.

I also believe ending needs to be good. However, the measurement of the 'good' is depends on the emotion evokes in the player. For example (spoiler/), the ending of Black Plague, where it says "Kill them all..." was one of the greatest endings I played so far(/spoiler). Ending is the point where you tell player that that part of the story actually ends. Thus, your last chance to shoot the player.

I agree with you for other three pints. Some of them might be real points of White Night

[plutomaniac]

Indeed it is interesting.

I totally agree that key point is to find a fragment of yourself in the story, of the player. At Amnesia, at first I was with the side of Daniel simply because I didn't know Alexander at all and because I couldn't simply hate him without any knowledge of what he did. Later on though, when you discover that you are actually far worse than Alexander well things changed for me. From that point I wanted to see the ending feeling that they both committed crimes and that they both don't deserve to be saved.

As far as Penumbra goes, I agree that I liked the ending of the game more than I did in Amnesia. And I mean that since I first played Amnesia and then the Penumbra series. The way that it forced me at the end to think like they do was, for me, amazing as an idea. Also, the ending was not good but rather sad for Philip.

About the ending, when I say bad I don't mean evil. For example I would characterize 2/4 endings of Amnesia bad simple because Daniel is punished for his actions. However, in reality, I consider them the right thing to happen.

I am a big fan of RPG games, together with many others of course, and that's because they always have an open world where you can find pieces of the story, tie them together and form the general idea/meaning that the creator wants to tell you. So in conclusion it seems that I'm a fan of fragmented storytelling and not (anymore) so much plot-based one (mainly because everyone use it) and that's why I liked Amnesia and the Penumbra game series so much.

[Hunter of Shadows]

So is this ready yet, or do I need to wait longer for it to be finished?

[Tanshaydar]

Hi guys,
There is a little teaser and a few new screens. If you are interested check it out here: http://www.moddb.com/mods/white-night/ne...and-teaser

After finishing reconstruction, I'll spend a little time to create a trailer. AVS Video Editor turned out to be useful.

So is this ready yet, or do I need to wait longer for it to be finished?

No, unfortunately it is not ready yet. You will have to wait a little longer, but I think it will worth it.

[Tenno]

The new teaser looks excellent, what you are doing with the engine is simply amazing!

Congratulations in the competition by the way, the community is right, this story has so much potential and its looking unbelievable so far.

Keep it up

[plutomaniac]

Mmm, so AVS Video Editor was helpful and easy to use but with lots of features? Alright, I will start using that too.

1) I like a lot the way you use lights and the fact that you lit them like tinderboxes.
2) Custom models, ha - great. The wheelchair especially!
3) I think I saw an outdoor environment, nice!
4) Waterlurker with fire? That reminds me of something...
5) "Do not forget to wash your hands after you kill someone" - WTF???

6) Noticed some flickering at the far wall here:

Spoiler below!

[skypeskype]

Awesome teaser. I lold at the "Do NOT forget to wash your hands after you kill someone" sign. This doesn't look like a custom story, it looks like an original game made by more people. The atmosphere and level design are great too. I cant seem to find any bad things about this project. Keep it up !

[Hunter of Shadows]

Hi guys,
There is a little teaser and a few new screens. If you are interested check it out here: http://www.moddb.com/mods/white-night/ne...and-teaser

After finishing reconstruction, I'll spend a little time to create a trailer. AVS Video Editor turned out to be useful.

So is this ready yet, or do I need to wait longer for it to be finished?

No, unfortunately it is not ready yet. You will have to wait a little longer, but I think it will worth it.

Aw *Continues to eagerly await this mod's completion*