Games Christmas at Morleyville Mall - testers wanted

Testers would be appreciated for the alpha demo of the redesigned version of "Morleyville Mall" : part horror / part quirky retail game. Testers will receive a free version of the full game.

The first scenario focuses on preparation for Black Friday and the Christmas season: play a succession of employees in a haunted mall, frantically setting up decorations, signs ("Please don't trample other customers unless authorized by management"), and Christmas-related merchandise or making holiday food items in a variety of stores. The horror element is intended to be merely creepy rather than over-the-top scary (except for the ugly Christmas sweaters and similar horrors - those are truly frightening). Some of the haunted activity is tongue-in-cheek, such as when poltergeists push boxes of "Second Childhood Adult Diapers" on the player's head in the "Older Than Dirt" store (which sells gag gifts for grandma). The full mall has about 100 stores, many of which will be included in the Christmas "chapter".

Suggestions about the game's focus (and name) would be appreciated. There are a number of known problems, such as LOD popping; failure of some of the Christmas lights to give off a glow in front of other transparent objects (how do we solve that, BTW?), lack of proper RNG balancing ("levels" are sometimes either too easy or nearly impossible depending on which entities decide to come out to play); and some other problems.

Here's the link for the demo. Currently, you can just pick between two stores (in the list on the lefthand side) and replay them as many times as you want. URL: http://www.indiedb.com/games/morleyville-mall/downloads/demo-morleyville-alpha
Some people on the forums seem to prefer a WebGL version for testing. If needed I can look into making a WebGL build.

Some screenshots:

Mannequins in "Gentleman Jim Menswear":




Sign for "Mr. O's Doughnuts":




Townshend's Department Store:



Strange shadow in "Baker Brutus" kitchen




Link for the demo: http://www.indiedb.com/games/morleyville-mall/downloads/demo-morleyville-alpha

 

More screenshots:

Mannequins in "Gentleman Jim Menswear":




Candy cane decorations and tacky Christmas shoes (notice the small candy canes, peppermint candies, etc) at "Blister Billy Shoes":

 

Window displays for Townshend's Department Store:

 

Has anyone tested it yet? If so, please post criticisms, suggestions, etc.

 

Thank you for your feedback.

Ambient occlusion would be nice to add, but the framerate is currently a bit slow on some machines, so it'll depend on whether a post-processing effect would be too expensive.

I assume your comment about the ceiling lights was referring to the "Window displays for Townshend's Department Store" screenshot? They look denser than they really are in that screenshot due to the angle, but I can look into changing them.

The corridor has light tan and brown floor tiles, and brownish granite walls. All of it is made a bit browner and redder by the reflective surfaces echoing the dominant color of the walls and the red glowing signs on nearby stores. That's the result of several reflection probes which tend to tint everything on a wider scale than would be the case in real life. The only alternatives would be either adding a denser array of reflection probes (more expensive) or using full realtime accurate reflections on all surfaces (a lot more expensive).

Did you test out the demo?

 

I'm conflicted about the advice from Superpig... right now the screenshots have kind of has a stark 90s prerendered/ray traced and everything is shiny/reflective because it can be / we didn't know better quality.

Advice like light mapped occlusion (and light mapping generally, I guess that is why the ceilings are so dark?) is a step towards making it look better but less like that, but I suspect need a lot of art changes to make it look like a more realistic mall (in the screenshots everything seems weirdly dark and yet well lit at the same time for example)

What ultimately prevents me from trying this is just the strong feeling that this is not for me... I'm not at all interested in a scary not scary job simulator (that isn't sure of it's own focus yet, but we've got attempts at humour like adult diapers for gran), I guess?

Outside of Pewdiepie, who is the audience? I'm sorry, and I don't mean it as harsh, I'm just stuck trying to see the appeal say for a grown up too old to really understand the appeal of Five Nights at Freddy's

 

I don't understand why you say everything looks too shiny and reflective. Actual malls have floors so shiny that they reflect almost like a mirror; walls are often shiny or consist largely of reflective store windows; racks and hangars are often made of shiny metal; mannequins are often metallic silver or bronze in color, or shiny white, etc. If anything, the game needs more of that type of thing to look like a real mall: e.g., right now, the floors only barely reflect the surrounding color rather than a clear image of nearby objects.

I assume you were referring to the corridors when you said it looks too dark but with a lot of lights at the same time? The corridors have dark granite walls, which makes them look dark; and the floors and ceilings reflect that same color and are thereby darkened. The store screenshots certainly aren't too dark, are they?

You have a good point about the focus, which is a problem; but there have been successful horror games that are fairly mild or even cute (such as "Tattletail"), whereas the really scary ones often don't sell very well because most people don't enjoy severe fright. I thought if I toned that down and made it more about Christmas nostalgia - memories of going Christmas shopping as a child and being creeped out by the mannequins - it might sell better. It's difficult to choose a focus and target audience for horror games. Suggestions would be welcome.

 

The large number of GOs for all the products on the shelves, clothing on hangars, etc, seem to slow it down the most. I scaled that back by combining a lot of meshes and using the LOD system to change entire stacks of clothes into single cubes at relatively close range, but some stores still run fairly slowly if they have a lot of items. Think of all the products in a real store.

 

Whether it's a problem or not depends on how well it runs on truly modern machines (mine isn't). Could you test it quickly - its only 15 MB to download. It would be greatly appreciated if someone would actually test it.

 

The file should be fixed now if you're willing to test it out. Thank you for telling me about the problem.

 

The link in the OP says: "The file you are trying to view (Morleyville Alpha Demo - MorleyvilleAlphaDemo.exe) uploaded by StarvingIndieDev has been deleted and is no longer available."

 

I changed the link. Thank you for spotting that - I was going to change it but then promptly forgot. I'll forget my own name next.

 

One of the custom shaders made for the game: mathematically-produced candy cane stripes with an illusion of slight translucency:

 

Front display in "Gentleman Jim Menswear":




Demo at: http://www.indiedb.com/games/morleyville-mall/downloads/demo-morleyville-alpha

 

Fixed another problem in the demo - it had been defaulting to the lowest graphic setting rather than the highest. URL is still the same.

 

A new dimension to the game: use an infrared device to see "anomalous figures" that are otherwise invisible (note that mall management calls it a "malfunction of the device", assuring everyone that the place isn't haunted).
This is an early version of the feature, with placeholder graphics for the infrared device; but the shader effect works fairly well:

 

New handheld infrared device (work in progress), the IRspector (tm) which players can use as a member of the "Spook Inspectors" paranormal society. This allows another type of "job" and thereby adds some variety: if players don't like putting up Christmas decorations and stocking shelves with ugly Christmas sweaters and the like, they can play a paranormal inspector hired to investigate individual stores. The "Spook Inspectors" team bills themselves as scientific researchers, even if their logo of a sheet ghost doesn't necessarily lend credibility to that claim.

Screenshot below shows the infrared camera detecting a figure that doesn't show up in normal light (invisible to the left of the device's screen).

 

Is the blue-green color scheme for the infrared device close enough to a typical actual detector, or would it be better to have a more common color scheme like the blue-purple-yellow colors that many people seem to use? The actual detectors can be adjusted for various color ranges, so it varies quite a bit. I thought the blue-green range (see below) was more subtle and therefore less jarring for the ghost figures, and also more spooky; but maybe it deviates too much from the common settings. The figures in the screenshot below are all mannequins at ambient temperature; but the previous screenshot above shows a ghost (nearly the same ambient color, except the ghosts move).

 

It appears you need to bake the GI (lighting, shadows, bounce) and such. Post Processing like Ambient Occlusion would go far here too.

 

There are several reasons why baked lighting isn't going to work for this game.

 

A new version of the demo has been uploaded, with two new levels that allow the player to investigate the stores for paranormal activity as a member of the Spook Inspectors Paranormal Society equipped with devices such as an infrared detector, ultraviolet full spectrum scanner, and electromagnetic field detector.

Screenshot below shows an anomalous figure showing up in infrared but not visible light:




Remember the Spook Inspector's motto: "If in doubt, run. If really in doubt, run faster".