The Librarian Nightmare Dev Blog #1-7

Thought Process of Making the level and challenges for each day developing the game (currently it's still an early stage development game)

What's the game about?

The Librarian Nightmare is a Puzzle Horror Game where you played as a Night Shift Librarian in a medieval castle and discovered the manneuquins can move when there's no light at all. Your goal is to make sure all of the mannequins went back to its originated standing post position so that you can restored all of the lights of the room.

Dev Blog # 1 Insipiration of making the game

Before making this game, I was replaying Resident Evil 4 (2023) and was having a blast playing the game and when I reached the Ashley section where you have to take control of her and player do not have any weapons aside from a lamp to temporary paralyze the knights armors in order to progress the game made me interested in making a similar mechanic to this and some puzzles for this short demo level showcase.

I quickly created a Rough Idea within my Game Design Document for the gameplay direction, level objectives and rough sketches of the library level direction, player experience, feautes of the game and the game loop of the games.

After that, I do a quick rough sketch on how the puzzle or obstacles would look like within the level using photoshop to have a rough thoughts on props placement.

Lastly,I also looked up some props heights like table, books, wall heights and shelves for some rough estimation whether the player will feel the table looks big or small when loooking at it. I did used assets from the UE marketplace and started doing some white boxing of the level .(the pitcture above).

Conclusion for Dev Blog#1

It's been a few months since I started working on an individual project with how much group projects I have invovled over the past 12 months, so going back to basic on practicing documentations and levels sketches is a good practice for my careeer purposes. I think after writing a rough idea of documentation, I can see the idea being interesting but it all comes down to execution of the level build which is the white boxing of the level which can make this game very boring. ( currently using shapes to demonstrate what props belongs to which to hasten the level building.)

Dev Blog #2 White boxing of the game

I continue working on the library section of the game by creating the floors, walls and placeholder shape props to represents table and books and placed it on the level based on the sketches I made. This is to set the mood of the level and whehter any props looks too big or small. I also made some places more compact to have some choke points in the second section of the libary so that: a. Levels feels slightly different and become progressively hard based on the knoweledge player know on the first section of the game b. Giving player a sense of tensity due to less hideable spot and chcoke points within the place.

After I created a rough idea on how the level would looks, I created the patrol route sketch by screenshoting it and based iton the sketch I came cout with to see whether the hideable spots can be used for players when the enemy is patrolling.

Conclusion for Dev Blog #2

The patrol route sketch of the enemy serves as an assistant to me to let me know whether players can get caught easily or not and based on that, I quickly adjusted some places props and replay the scene over and over again to nail down the level direction. Although this has been acheived, with more features being introduced, some props placement are definetly getting some changes and with the system being introduce next time, some things are bound to not work as intended.

Dev Blog #3 Light System and Enemy behavior

I started create a light switch because its one of the core feature of the game to test out the level so that the player can: a. On and Off the lights once close to interactions b. make the enemy to stop moving once interacted with the lights Not only that I also created a simple patrol system using the target point so it will always follow this particular patrol.

Conclusion for Dev Blog #3

The feature for the light feature turns out to be harder than expected because initially I used pawn sensing to try and detect the player and stop the movement only for me to find out it's only applicable towards characters which make me temporary hit on a wall in terms of development. However, it took me a while to figure out using shapes collision to make enemy stop movement once collided and when player deactivate the lights which also means deactivting the collision of the shape which enable the enemy to continue patrol.

Dev Blog #4 Pressure Switches to open doors

I started created a pressure switch and a door feature because its one of the core feature of the game for player to progress the level where: a. When enemy stand on top of the pressure switch, it will open the door while when it move away from the switch, the door will slowly close off

Conclusion for Dev Blog #4

The feature for the both of the features are prettty straightforward and took a bit of bug testing to fully function. However, the real important question regarding the design and I think the most tough part of making this game is how player should time on when to on the lights so the enemy can stand on top of the switch for a certain time to make the door fully open, and finally enable all the lights of the room which until today is a challenging task for me to think about.

Dev Blog #5 Lighting all rooms up once enemy step on top of the pressure switch.

I created this light up the room feature to indicate that the area has been cleared should player be confused on where they are now and not knowing whether the obstacles has been cleared.

Conclusion for Dev Blog #5

The feature for is a bit tough than expected because initally when I created the light up all lights feaute was using an array but it only light up one light only. Therefore in the end, I changed it to manually light up the lights which uses a lot of repetable codes but it works out fine. After this, I made that when the enemy is on top of the switch for more than 5 sec, the enemy movement will stop and won't move until the game has been reset but currently is still very clunky but it at least gives the general gist of its function in this game.

Dev Blog #6 Enemy chase player behavior

I created this enemy chase player feature due to the game's genre of horror and make player more cautious of moving around the level when spotted the enemy.

Conclusion for Dev Blog #5 The feature is pretty straight forward for the most part but I think the hardest part is setting the radisu of the pawn sensing due to feautre testing level and white boxing level is different which can make me feel puzzled on why the enemy still following me even i have some distance with it. The raidus currently looks okay for now but it will defeinetly change as the level continues to be developed and more feautres being introduced.

Early showcase of the build:

Conclusion for Build: Function of the features are working good just the speed and detection range of the enemy and player still need abit of work due to the tutorial level being more compact and have some choke points to look out for. I also will continue work more on the level since that's the main purpose of the making the game. Thank you for reading up until this point! Will see you soon!

Dev Blog #7 Continue White boxing for the remaining 2 section of the level and Implementing grabbing movable props. I continue working on the hallway section and the final section of the library by first sketching out the levels to brainstorm whether the player can understand what the objective of the level just by looking at the props. For the hallway section, I decided to introduce an easy puzzle to let the player knows what kind of puzzle they will be facing and how they can know the hints of showing by using checking the pictures and the mannequin intitial equip weapons are wrong. I also decided not to introduce any enemies in this section for player to catch a breather in the level while still able to learn something new that fits in to the level.

The sketch above shows the correct answers on the puzzles solution on which weapon or props should be plaed in order to bypass the section.

Lastly for the level, I started using free downloadble assets from the UE marketplace and CG traders to implement within the level by replacing old placeholder shapes while continue retaining shapes that are not updated yet.

Next I also implemented the grabbing object and placing it ontop of the pressure switch feature so that player have to place the certain object to bypass the level as shown in the video:

Conclusion for Dev Blog 7: I did gone through many iterations of the hallway section from big space until I decided to keep it in a narrow spaces due to wanting to teach the player on how to solve the puzzle by looking at the environment props and with narrow spaces, player is able to view the place and naviagate around more easily. Lastly, although the feature of obtaining item and placing back down the floor is working, it's still not as polish and still cluncky, will definetly come back and fix it!