Color Fear Devlog The Future of Fear

If Color Fear was made to be the best horror game then we need to push the current design forward and fix all its current issues.

I'm a bad writer so please forgive me before reading this, anyways-

First and foremost the jumpscare is the stapple of all great horror movies but the current version of Color Fear only had one and that jumpscare is only a 50% chance of being seen. even though i love it because it can scare me I wanted jumpscares in the game but in a more dynamic way.

Should the jumpscare be when you die maybe but that's too predictable and not scarry. Should the jumpscare come when you first see the intruder meh also predictable. So i came up with an idea what if when you are looking at the intruder there is a chance for you to get jumpscared at any moment. When i play it its really fucking scary and works! It promotes more of that "there is something behind me but i cant fucking look at it." mentality. This new jumpscare system still needs to be optimized so it "feels right" but currently it takes Color Fear to a different level.

Next LIGHTING i felt like something wasn't right about Color Fear's Lighting from it's current Act 1 Release.

Then it hit me THE PLAYER IS THE LIGHT the light is just emanating from the camera point of view so anything you point the camera at is directly pointed as the light. What is wrong with this??? The player sees no shadows for objects that it points its light at. Its like if we were the sun pointing at earth trying to see its shadow. We wont

so i updated the Player flashlight to be more angled as into the players hand i also added a slow idle animation to the flashlight so it feels less stiff and can move around a bit making the shadows and things you point at feel more alive. i added in a slight decal to the flashlight so it feels more real also I made the flashlight light itself more dynamic so it feels better during gameplay.

Next Lighting thing i got wrong was the Intruder i didn't notice it but the intruder had no shadows coming from any of the lights. This i will blame on myself i had no idea that while Distance Field lighting makes shadows look better, it can't cast shadows on skeletal meshes.

This means that the only time that you could see shadows on an intruder would be when the player shined the flashlight on them but guess what the player was the light at the time </3 </3 fuck I'm dumb.

anyways i found a way to fix the issue and keep Distance Field Lighting to keep the game looking and feeling good without having to use raytracing which even runs like shit on my computer so i cant have that. Anyways Intruders now have shadows!

Finally i felt like some of the lighting did not look good in some areas so i went and did a final lighting pass to all levels to make the game look as good as possible!

Now we can go over the other big issues that were fixed and some new additions. Intruders not moving, The shitty controller to UI navigation!, Bad Intruder spawning

First off Intruders not moving when being seen at an angle was an issue i didn't find until it hit me that one of the zone systems i had created had blocked vision without being visible if that makes sense so the player wouldn't trigger the Intruder until they got out of the non vision zone that they couldn't see. This was fixed while being able to keep the zone so everything works as intended now. If you see an intruder in a room you are looking at them now!

Next was the bad controller UI Navigation which was really bothering me but i couldn't fix since i had no idea what the solution should be at the time of release for act 1 but i found out that the Controller Plugin that i was using for Unreal Engine worked with everything but UI lol like who does this???? anyway i found another plugin that i could merge with the current one that i was using so i could streamline the process of controller UI. Now it works as intended no need to spam smash the select button to click something! Controller UI Works now!

Finally probably the most complicated issue is the Intruder Spawning System. This issue is so complicated that i was learning as i was making it! The intruder needs to spawn in within a place where they can move within the building that isn't obstructed by another object which is hard to do when the place is a fully furnished house. This would lead to the intruder spawning in walls floors and ceilings and places where they couldn't move or places where they could move outside of the map.

There is also another issue that makes the system more complicated and hard to debug. It's that the spawn system is dynamic and based off of the player, item and building locations. So these issues all had to be resolved with a lot of focus and time. Each one of these issues has now thankfully been addressed and fixed.

Now we can get to the new shit! New game modes, maps and Intruders. I will only give some slight spoilers to the new things (Some details might change on these things in the future)

There are now 8 Game modes in total 2 of the new game modes are Wall Art and the other is Door Colors. Both of these game modes are different from each other but bring the dynamicness of Color Fears game modes to a new level!

There are Also 8-9 Intruders in total now 2 of the new intruders are Ghost and Pup. I can't wait till people see Pup this shit is gonna be C I N E M A. And of course each of these new intruders have new abilities so its gonna be fun to see people going against each one!

also 2 new maps have been added bringing the total maps to 4 kind of its a bit more complicated than that but you will see! one of the new maps is called Mayfly the other is Daycare

There also have been a bunch of small QOL changes and probably some other big things that i cant quite remember at the moment (Intruders faces look at you now, specific death wording, updated some building layouts for assets, fixed some door collision and animation issues, new door types, all night shop items work now, new cinematics, more calamities, fixed some buildings and characters not having detailed textures, intruders no longer get stuck on spawned items, intruders also no longer get stuck when teleporting to player, new scary audio system for random building noises, textures for the buildings now have a more varied and better look, Intruders Clothing and cloth now moves as cloth should)

Thanks for reading i appreciate the love and support for the project!