Custom story: Courage [Canceled]

[DIGI Byte]

--- Quest 02: Puppet show of doom ---

This is the second default quest, not linked to the first Quest

Spawn location: Kitchen, at the table playing a cinematic of the player eating food
Quest: Power outage, Check the generator in the basement and fix it
screenplay:
-playing cinematic of player eating food, power flickers and goes out and a sound of a generator dying fades in and exits the cinematic

-investigates the generator in the basement and notice the fuel is empty

-player needs to collect a fuel can from the back of the car

-things move about behind the player in the house, help creating atmosphere as the player hears footsteps and scuffling behind him

-player joined the fuel can to the generator to let it fill before a spark occurs, player must change the extensions cord on the generator else it wont work

-the fuel drum is stolen, with only the sound of a clang, player turns around to see a portal hovering next to the generator

-player enters the portal and is ported to an amusement stand in the middle of a fenced off park- with the sound of a running generator nearby

-dark shadows move around before entering a tent with a puppet gypsey lighted to the side and the other area's locked off

-approaching the machine causes it to start playing music and 'come to life'

-player picks up a coin and inserts it in the machine and it gives a puzzle/mini-quest before opening a blocked off area

-inside the new area is a merrygo round with broken steam pipes the player must fix

- the merry-go-round flicks on and plays music as it spins, forcing the door to close, an access panel below the player sparks and pops off, the player falls down into a small sewer area, followed by an echoing boom sound from a grumbling creature the music has woken up

- to be continued later...

-Quest complete

Puppet concepts and ideas

  Quest concept Puppets of doom.jpg (Size: 132.59 KB / Downloads: 46)

Jinggle the clown

  jinggle the clown.jpg (Size: 200.4 KB / Downloads: 37)

[DIGI Byte]

other then the demon puppets which are inspired by the 'SAW' puppet, silent hill and a few other things

"The butcher"

another type of enemy is going to be "The butcher", the original idea for my amnesia mod
unlike the puppets which is a group of enemies, the butcher is a single deranged enemy, inspired by "pyramid head" from silent hill with a mix of "Jason" and "texas chainsaw massacre"

he was my original idea for my mod before adapting the "courage" theme

The idea is that this guy invades your house
The story... a crack in time space opened up and this sick monster came into your house
he's a hermit type creature who died 12 years ago and his ghost haunts your place, at first he's in the kitchen, stomping around, which wakes the player up, he's ghosty at the moment, like a film grain see through look, he completely ignore you and you can walk through him

by a bit of exploring the player finds a portal he came through, but you cant use it because the portal is ethereal and connected to him

The butcher being a ghost will be oblivious to everything around him, stuck in time as it were... he goes around doing his own thing, giving the player time to explore and check things out

OLD animation concept

Spoiler below!

he goes over to the bench, cleans things and heads over and pulls out a dead body (human) throws them on the table and starts cutting them up, he has trouble with the bones so he gets a pair of bolt cutters
he then plays with the head, playing with the jaw before pushing his thumbs through the eye sockets and laughing before slapping the head back down on the bench before pushing it into the bin where it makes a heavy meaty thud, he wipes his hands onto his apron and then stabs his knife into the table before walking off to attend to the some pieces of meat (and repeats)

The player can then touch his meat knife, causing everything to "puff" into reality, the knife is stuck inside the table, but is now real, the butcher... now real... is alerted to you and wants you dead
(shouldn't touch his best friend )
if you stay near the knife he'll push you back and grab his knife out of the bench before coming after you, if you go and hide, he'll start patrolling the house looking for you, he'll occasionally tap the end of his knife around as he looks for you

- CONCEPTS NEEDED -
for the butcher, I'm thinking big solid guy with bloody tattered apron with burned out black eyes and a rope burn mark around his neck, a lil chubby and has bandage wraps around his arms and hands with a few fingers stitched together badly from an accident

- image references -
-NSFW-

Spoiler below!

[Frontcannon]

NSFW spoiler tags please.

Also way too gory for my taste.

[DIGI Byte]

(12-17-2010 03:26 PM)Frontcannon Wrote:  NSFW spoiler tags please.

Also way too gory for my taste.

its only one part

maybe its a lil to far with the eye part, but I want to make alot ofpeople squirm and feel completely horrified by it... and I guess you got the reaction I was after

Edit:
The idea is to not just give him the presence of being a ghost butcher, the human body makes him evil and dangerous, him playing with the head is to show that he really enjoys it and to show how evil and twisted he is... ofcourse its not your taste... its not supposed to be...
unless you have the same interests as the butcher

[Frontcannon]

Though gore can be used to invoke disgusted / scared feelings in the player, shoving it in the player's eyes like this is just poor taste. It sounds like a teenager's fantasy of a horror film.

Indirect horror or making the player imagine this stuff by himself is way more effective, in my opinion.

[DIGI Byte]

(12-17-2010 03:49 PM)Frontcannon Wrote:  Though gore can be used to invoke disgusted / scared feelings in the player, shoving it in the player's eyes like this is just poor taste. It sounds like a teenager's fantasy of a horror film.

Indirect horror or making the player imagine this stuff by himself is way more effective, in my opinion.

your right and I agree, imagination is more fear driven then what we see
and this isn't directly thrown into the players face, the camera isn't going to follow any of this around, but sometimes you cant drive on imagination without a visual shock, have you ever seen a gore site? imagining what they could be is one thing, but seeing them is another whole level

Edit: The goal of a visual thing is to shock the player and make them disgusted, it also puts a more firm idea of the horrible thing in comparison to never seeing it, much to the same effect of having those torture rooms in amnesia where you saw what happened after
while using the players imagination to create fear, so having something chase you, creates shock from it chasing you, and fear from imagining what will happen when they catch you

[Frontcannon]

I won't go into details, but 4chan and associates are no stranger to me.
So I am sure when I say: gore isn't scary. It even has the opposite effect!

You fear what you don't know. That's why monster encounters in Amnesia are so scarce. If you would show the player the butcher and his actions so openly, why would there be a reason to fear him?
Pyramid Head in Silent Hill 2 had very few appearances, too, so I think using the Butcher as a mysterious figure that would show every so often and the player discovering his mad butchering sessions (but don't go overboard there, desensitisation must be avoided) could make the encounters with the Butcher way scarier.

[DIGI Byte]

the objective is not to incite fear into the player, but pure shock, so when he vanishes and roams around you will fear him much more, there are many types and ways you can ensure fear, one is the 'deadly shadow' approach, that's a powerful and common approach, less is more as you can say, its what amnesia uses, but its good to have variety, the butcher is more like an over bearing presence in the house, after that first scene when he's a ghost, is to only show him in his natural behavior, a last and only good chance to get a look at him before he's a deadly thing to be feared, not to mention that he will also be ethereal and see through so imagination does come to play in a small part, but fear isn't the goal for that scene, its goal is disgust

when you see gore, it does the opposite of fear, yes, the idea of fear is to push the player back and forth, keeping a player in constant fear gets boring as well, so variety and pacing is important

Edit: the scene with the butcher is not to leave it as mysterious, he has a story
I want the butcher arc... the fear, disturbance and gore to be like jumping into a deep pool and you drowning for a few seconds before clinging to the side to reach the shallow end and wondering if something evil is in the water

you ask why would you fear him?
its like seeing a person next to you getting killed by a mutant zombie dog with a chainsaw strapped to its back... then it coming for you... seeing what will happen to you can push your imagination even further then not knowing

[DIGI Byte]

After abit of thought and and consideration, Front cannon is right, it is to much, so the butcher scene will be cut back to a milder version, which will give more fright towards the end when the truth is uncovered about the butcher

[DIGI Byte]

Due to several limitations on the HLP2 Engine, Courage is simply not possible and effective immediately is canceled

Reasons being;
-cannot support dynamic/multiple story switching without the help of a HLP2 code guru, someone familiar with tricks and ways around the code

-cannot support user interfaces and player interaction to the game world, so having a personal computer in game is technically impossible at the current time

- cannot create an outdoor scene effectivly due to restrictions on lighting and shadow dynamics, even at night time