Ghost Elevator
Devlog #1
In these devlogs I’ll provide short updates of the development of Ghost Elevator. For the first one, let me give you a short summary of the current state of the game.
The development of Ghost Elevator consists of two main efforts: the core-loop and mechanics experimentation.
Building the core loop means making the game playable, or in other words, there has to be winning and losing conditions. In this game’s context, that would mean:
- Players can use the elevator to move between the levels.
- Players can find keycards in every level.
- Players can die from the enemy and lose the game.
The mechanics experimentation is another part of the development in which I implement any interesting mechanic ideas that I could think of, and see if that works well in the context of the core loop.
Current state of the core loop
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Players can move from the lobby (starting level, see screenshot above) to the next floor. The elevator needs a keycard, and all players have to be inside for it to work (this probably will be only for the lobby, in other levels players could be left behind if it’s too risky to wait for them). Levels are loaded with level streaming, which means we have no loading screens when moving between the levels.
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The second level is currently a static level. The idea is to make levels procedurally generated, combining different pre-defined rooms with randomized props, but in order to allow working on core loop and mechanics sooner, I created a temporary level just for testing purposes.
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Key cards for the elevator now randomly spawn around the level, in predefined places. The pick up mechanic is quite buggy at the moment, and I’m currently working on rewriting that.
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The enemy exists in the game, it walks around, and when it sees the player it starts to chase him. The AI is very simple for now, this will be improved over time. The enemy currently does nothing if it reaches the player.
Current state of game mechanics
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The game has a simple sanity system. When the player is in the dark, his sanity is slowly draining, and stepping into the light increases it. This currently has no game-altering effects yet, but the idea is to make the player experience visual impairment, hearing scary noises and the player itself start making more noise, attracting the enemy.
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Implemented a simple sound cue system, which plays random sounds in predefined places. The idea is to have two categories: replicated and unreplicated sound cues. Non-replicated sounds will only play locally, meaning sounds will not be played for all players at the same time, at the same location. These will be only for non-important sounds, used purely for building an atmosphere (like creaking wooden floors, water flowing through pipes, occasional muffled thumps, etc). The replicated ones will be played for everyone at the same time, so players could share the experience of hearing a scary noise. These could be completely random, or initiated by the enemy.
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Added a simple breaker mechanic, which will pop-off once in a while, cutting all electricity in the level. To fix that, the player needs to go to the basement and turn it on again.
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The AI has a simple, yet unfinished perception system. It sees things only what’s in front of it, but it can also hear the player when it’s opening doors. The player can open the door slowly if it crouches, making less noise. The idea is to greatly expand this system, so players would need to be careful when doing things around the level, because everything can be noticed by the enemy.
So this is how the game looks right now. There are more interesting things I’d love to mention, but I’ll keep them a secret for now. When mechanics will be closer to the finished state, I will expand more on them in future posts.
