Ideea for the next horror game

[membrain]

If I had the ability to influence the next horrorgame (maybe Amnesia 2 or Penumbra 4) I'd also appreciate the hand-on-wall-thing but there are some more things I would add/change with higher priority:
- The player is able to duck on the floor
- Crates can be opened to hide inside
- The player can put his (or her?) ear to a door to hear what's behind (at least muffled sounds)
- No music (In my opinion real horror comes from what you hear and cannot see - like in Silent Hill)
- A more open world to explore
- Climbing
- Running faster for a short time
- Leaning with the back to the wall and "merging" with it (or with the darkness)
- Maybe zombies (not as only enemies). I just like them :>
- Animals like rats or birds which - when flushed - give away your position to enemies
- Nearly every object can be used as weapon (for instance cou can brake a chairleg or grab a stone and throw it at enemies)
- Destructing the world would be great. So you could (assuming you find the right tools) dig through walls or break furniture to use it to block a door or to build a bridge.
- Bigger maps
- optical noise in dark areas (you might know it from gothic 3 community patch 1.74)

That's what I can think of spontaneously.

membrain

[superluser]

- The player is able to duck on the floor
- Animals like rats or birds which - when flushed - give away your position to enemies
- optical noise in dark areas (you might know it from gothic 3 community patch 1.74)

There are good, do them. #3 was actually done in Penumbra, do that again.

Multiple levels of crouch would be kind of nice, and it doesn't have to be vermin, but there could be some sort of flushable animal (not goldfish)--that could make for some really interesting conundrums. Do I want to hide there and risk disturbing the animal (or I am hiding there and now I can't move because an animal has come along). Or even just plant life or debris.

But as always, do what the story tells you to do.

[Wafthrudnir]

optical noise in dark areas (you might know it from gothic 3 community patch 1.74)

What is a optical noise? (Just played G3 demo...hated it, G1/G2 over all ;D)

[membrain]

optical noise in dark areas (you might know it from gothic 3 community patch 1.74)

What is a optical noise? (Just played G3 demo...hated it, G1/G2 over all ;D)

Didn't know how to call it in English. By "optical noise" I mean what you can see, when you take a photograph with a digital camera in the dark. You'll never get pitch black, there will always be some "noise", some "flickering", let's say, very dark but colored pixels changing color.
As example from Gothic 3:
http://img.7pics.info/g3_noise_01_cp174_02_c60.jpg

membrain

[Wafthrudnir]

Ok thanks, in german it's called Bildrauschen. The word noise confused me a little, only know it from music/sound editing But after thinking about...everything makes sense...

In penumbra is a noise filter...did you mean that?

Thanks for the explanation membrain

[membrain]

I'm sorry to confuse you. Didn't want to.
Though I played all three Penumbra games I never mentioned a noise filter or such an effect and as far as I remember I played on highest settings (except resolution). Maybe just missed it.

But this noise filter should only be an nice but unessential addition. There are a few more things that are more important or at least more useful:
- Throwing little stones to mislead enemies
- kicking enemies back (to gain a few seconds to run away)
- burn wooden objects for making light
- meeting people outside the main location (in this case the castle) to calm down, buy or share items, eat and sleep (I know those things might be unnerving after a while but who says that the player can't take amphetamine/stimulant drugs to stay awake or can't find enough items if looked for adequate? )
- sneaking mode
- Some sort of "light meter" to measure how visible you are.

That's all so far.

membrain

[Quakeman224]

Ive already got my project underway. although I want to keep things under wraps until I have something to show

[membrain]

Hi,

I just had another idea. It's about ducking and crouching. There is a way to improve ducking and make it stepless. Rotating the scroll wheel while holding a button (Shift for example) could (if set up fine enough) make crouching continously. There woudn't be the steps "standing", "ducking" and "crouching" anymore.
Same technique could be used to run (like in Splinter Cell) and for leaning sidewards.

What do you think? Would this be useful (or intuitive)?

membrain

[superluser]

I just had another idea. It's about ducking and crouching. There is a way to improve ducking and make it stepless. Rotating the scroll wheel while holding a button (Shift for example) could (if set up fine enough) make crouching continously. There woudn't be the steps "standing", "ducking" and "crouching" anymore.

I can't imagine it being intuitive, but it's certainly not very realistic. The body can't keep up most of those positions for any length of time. Try crouching and walking around. Not fun, but you can do it. Now try a couple of positions halfway between there and standing. You might be able to manage one, but for most of those, holding that position for an extended period of time would cause your knees to give out.

[CHANCEPHOENIX]

As long as the developers stick to a first-person view , i"m happy