Incline The First Game To Go Public On Steam For Golden Era (Post Grimoire)

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

Survival horror and it's getting a little beta testing right now. I predict it will have a page up on Steam very soon and will be released in the next three months.

The last time I announced the title, somebody stole it and put a prototype up on Steam with that very name.

The reason I told the story a while back about the night I got locked in on the Bowling Green subway platform and woke up to some kind of giant rat nightmare is that I have had a game idea inspired by it I have been toying with for at least three decades.

It sort of caught fire a while back when my interest in POST-ATOMIC fizzled for a while but I've been working every single night on it for several weeks. The more I do on it, the more excited I get about it. It's scaring me because it is based on similar impressions I have had of being stuck in the subway system at night with the gates to the surface locked around me. I have a few other elements and some game mechanics going right now. Including inventory, sound-based detection by enemies and even a couple classic adventure game puzzles in it.

It's really shaping up to be the kind of survival horror I wanted it to be.

Chances are the first screenshots will be posted here before I upload it for Steam to have a look at.

The sound is quite good, too. Things improved when I could move beyond 8 bit retro sound effects and music.

Best of all, ammunition is extremely scarce and firing a gun will only bring down hell on you anyway. The emphasis is on stealth and using various game mechanics to get around the menaces.

I've made good use of cookie projectors. There is something really frightening I have found in seeing shadows without actually seeing the menace in many places. I also stuck in a few jump scares but that's not a crutch leaned on anywhere.

 

[Morblot]

Is this done with Unity the way you mentioned you might do some time ago?

 

[Iri]

This actually sounds right up my alley. So 3 months.... what is that in non-neandrathal time... 12 years? I'll buy it on release and not play it til it's patched up a year later like everything nowadays. See you in 2031, can't wait Cleve!

 

[Jenkem]

where is apocalypse bugout?

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Survival horror? Does it include cosmic horror?

Armoire: Heralds of the Eldritch Abomination

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

where is apocalypse bugout?

This is Apocalypse Bugout but with a new title. I saved the "Bugout By Vehicle" concept for another game.

P.S. If this sells decently I will definitely do the vehicle pack and bugout game as a sequel in the same vein.

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

Is this done with Unity the way you mentioned you might do some time ago?

Yes. With actual PBR and substance textures, quite a ways from Grimoire in graphics.

It is running pretty fast on my dev machine and if it runs fast on my machine it will run fast anywhere.

A few hints if you are working in Unity :

1. Atlas all textures when you have final architecture.
2. Combine all static meshes into one parented group.
3. All sounds should be catalogued under one listener.
4. Preload everything.
5. Optimize deferred and leave forward as an option for rendering.
6. Leave out post-processing frills except for optimized bloom, vignette and blurs ... the others are too expensive and are not worth the effect anyway.
7. Flares are a cheap method of enhancing light sources.
6. You really don't need more than a half dozen realtime shadows combined with light mapping for it to look AAA.

You can get Unity to run at the speeds that Sauerbraten does but with PBR even on old machines using these tricks.

 

[AdolfSatan]

Proper optimization gives me a raging hard-on, the world needs more devs like Cleve. Looking forward to this.

 

[Diggfinger]

The world needs more horror, and I'm all for this game

'Ive made good use of cookie projectors. There is something really frightening I have found in seeing shadows without actually seeing the menace in many places. I also stuck in a few jump scares but that's not a crutch leaned on anywhere.

Btw. what's a cookie projector?
And why does Cleve need one to make his game?