The Making
EzTerix
Prologue
It began sometime in late August when I finished compiling ideas and was ready to manifest Silent Hill 2 into a Starcraft map. I had recently Silent Hill 1, 2, and 3 Let's Plays on youtube and was simply intrigued by the atmospheric world of Silent Hill. I would later watch a Silent Hill 4 Let's Play and join various fan sites of the series My first taste of Silent Hill was in 2006 when I actually saw the movie Silent Hill in theaters and simply enjoyed it. After many days of research on the series I was finally ready to make a faithful adaptation of the critically acclaimed Silent Hill 2 to Starcraft with slight twists.
The Beginning
Before making Silent Hill: Restless Dreams I made 3 different maps over the summer with varying success and quality. Even before that...long before that... I made maps, but they were primitive and made without skill. There were literally no triggers in the games to the three default triggers. Successfully creating a horror game adaptation may have been harder to implement than I thought. However my dedication fed with the Last Stand RPG contest encouraged me to work through.
The program I used was SCMDraft. At first I was startled by the program. I only had minor training from a couple of maps I made during the summer and a few youtube videos on triggering. Learning how to use the system came easy at first but as things got more complex I had to refer back to online sources....such as SEN. When I was comfortable with the system I was prepared to start.
I almost instantly started on the environment of the game. What I did not know was how the Nooks and Crannies error would come to torment the map. Much changes for better and for worse would be made to the game. While working on the final parts of the environment I came head to head with the error.
Nooks and Crannies....ARGHHSHFSFJK
The error came as a complete surprise and I tried asking SEN how to fix this problem. Even they were not 100% sure as how to deal with the error. All they knew was it had to do with the terrain and gave me a few ideas to try out. This error single handedly stopped progress of my game initially for an entire week and a few more distant days after that. I was confused but finally realized that I had to make a terrain sacrifice. The massive amount of structural terrain I found was causing the map to crash and by running it over with dirt I was able to rid of the error. The result was the deletion of two entire levels (Hotel and Labyrinth) and the massive trimming of ALL other levels. The game would not be as epic in size as I had hoped.
And.....CUT!
One thing I felt would be perfect for the story of Silent Hill was to implement cutscenes. This would turn out to be one of the most time consuming tasks I have ever faced. It took about 2 months to add in all of the cutscenes. These cutscenes required proper dialogue and had to run perfectly. Even now I have not fixed the ending of the game 100% do to many, many headaches of trying to figure it out. I felt the end result of worth it. I had a game with an enthralling story that even some Starcraft players could connect with on an emotional level. Worth it!
The *CRUNCH
I had finished the terrain, the cutscenes, the mon-wait. Where are all the enemies? THIS GAME HAS NO ENEMIES!! It was four days before the game needed to be submitted to the Last Stand RPG Challenege...and I had to submit a game with no enemies? No way! From all the research I have collected while making the game I was able to properly name the monsters, unit balance, unit place, and all in under a week. At this time I also quickly spun the unique beginnings of each character. Then version A was born.
Nightmare A
I was blissful after the release of Version A. This whole thing was finally over. After the release and a few games online I found that it worked great. Problem was that people always died on the FIRST LEVEL! Apparently I made this game far too difficult in the one week I had to create the game. Survival Horror? More like IMPOSSIBLE! I also felt many things could be improved and added...
Miracle B
Version B, a large improvement over Version A. Version B featured centered locations on units, something I never ever done before. This version also completely revamped the music. I edited about 80% of the songs in the game to make it so they don't end abruptly and to trim the file size. I felt like such a pro sound editor...
Also I actually made Version B possible and included the amazing “Single Player Handicap Mode”. This made it so people could play the game in Single Player as James Sunderland. It turned out incredible and would give players the general experience that they should get. Multiplayer could cause loss of tension so making a Single Player Mode could allow them to get a new experience.
WTF IS GOING ON??? C
Version C was a very brief version. When I tested it online I discovered some incredibly horrible gameplay bugs such as player 2 controlling 2 angelas and Loren having no healthdrinks. I had to go all over the internet and delete this version. What a mess!
It's Over F
The final version of my game released on January 18, 2010. I felt I put a lot of effort into the game and was glad to make a complete version. The main focus was to fix the broken ending, but to no avail the bug sometimes persists but sometimes doesn't. Overall I was happy with the final product and many people seemed to enjoy it aswell.
Epilogue
I just have to say it was a fun ride creating Silent Hill: Restless Dreams. This is probably my most professional map to date. After taking a small break from mapping...I actually missed working on this map. It not only made me learn much about map making but also exposed me to Starcraft and Silent Hill culture. It was an amazing experience and I am glad to have summoned the dedication to make this game. I'd also have to say thanks to the people who loved my game you guys are great and I love it when people point out similarities or understand the story to an emotional standpoint. Thanks!
Shclang Shclang!
Do I have anymore planned projects? One that has been totally feeding off my ideas is making an adaptation of Clock Tower. ATM I know much about the series and feel I have the ability to make a faithful adaptation...with my own twists of course
. Genre? Non-Combat Survival Horror. It'll be tough but I hope I can pull it off. I will make sure to include a well crafted storyline with many survival horror aspects. It will no doubt be different from Silent Hill: Restless Dreams but I'm sure the style will have you interested.And yeah ty =)
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