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Old 04-11-2011, 02:55 AM   #147
Pyke
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Dec 2010
Posts: 153
Default Updates! And stuff.

http://www.stasisgame.com/medical-bay/



I have been busy with the first chapter of the game, which is full of ‘introduction areas’. More industrial places…train stations, tracks, elevator shafts. While its awesome to have these areas, because it really does build suspence, and give you the impression of going deeper into the ship-they can get a bit boring to build.
So, I jumped the gun a little, and went into the medical bays. These will be in the early parts of chapter 2, or the late parts of chapter 1, depending on a few story, and ‘flow’ related things….but trust me when I say that when you eventually get to the medical bays, they will be AWESOME.
Something thats rather difficult in a game like this, specifically one where the character is, for all purposes, alone, is how to get information across in an interesting way. For a while, I toyed around with the idea that there are some survivors on board that you find, and while I’m not discounting that entirely, to find survivors this early on in the game would really be counter productive to the atmosphere in the game. You are completely alone. You must FEEL completely alone.
Now there is also the computer terminals to get information…but thats a bit boring. This is Science Fiction dammit! Ships logs can be done in a pirate game. Its not unique enough to the genre! There ARE computer teriminals in STASIS but again, I really want to make them…different.
HOLOGRAMS.

There is a scene in Lost In Space, and Final Fantasy, where they are performing surgery through a holographic interface. Holograms just ‘go’ in Sci Fi-so if I can find a place to put them in STASIS, Im going to!
I thought about how beneficial it would be for a doctor to be able to record, in high detail, a surgery. Be able to walk around it, see what was done. Now imagine how scary that would be, if you discovered a recording of that surgery….when the patient wakes up, mid surgery, with nobody around them. I have a fear of hospitals, and waking up during surgery, so this was right up my ‘shit that creeps me out’ alley!
THE DESIGN

I first built the bed, with the surgical consoles and robotic arm thing hanging above it. The room was then built around the bed.
The ‘rays’ from the center of the room are channels to allow blood to flow into drainage systems under the room. The center ‘disk’ was originally supposed to rotate into place, but that just became way to memory intensive.
IS ANYONE THERE?
The actual surgery was built around something that I find…disturbing. Cutting a man in half, and having him complain that he cant feel his legs…having him plead to just let him walk out. I lined up the hologram so that the skeletons eyes are almost fixed on the PLAYER, and when the hologram turns his head it lines up with the skulls eye sockets. The effect is subtle, but adds to the disturbing nature.
Something to note is that from the surgical terminal, you will be able to call up different recordings. It will work through simple DIALOG tree system. Each recording will have some different information in it, be it ‘mission specific’ or just recordings that set the tone of the game.
A NOTE ON SOUND

The voice overs is again, me with a mic. Ill be looking for actual voice artists to do the voices, but for now we are stuck with my voice and pitch changes!
I have set up the sound tho that, I just have to replace the sound file, and the rest of the scene will play out no matter the length of that file. This helps, not only for replacing the sound with ‘actual’ actors voices, but also for localisation. If a sentence is longer, or shorter, the rest of the scene just dynamically adjusts itself to fit.
IN ACTION:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfKUR...layer_embedded

-Chris
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