Nightmar

Are you ready to face your fears and unravel the mysteries of the haunted Nightmar house? In this immersive VR game, you are trapped inside a haunted house and must find four keys to escape. But beware, a terrifying creature is hunting you down. Spectators can join in on the thrill by watching the game through a security camera-like view, switching between four different cameras for a unique perspective. Will you be the one to escape the nightmare or will you become the creature's next victim? Play Nightmar and find out.

Videos

Demo

Are you ready to experience the terror of Nightmar? In this demo video, we will give you a sneak peek into the gameplay of this dual experience VR/Desktop horror game. From the haunting visuals to the pulse-pounding ambiance, Nightmar will keep you on the edge of your seat as you explore a mysterious and terrifying mansion. Get a taste of the game's unique visuals and master the game as you encounter rooms, keys and perhaps even the monster!

Making of Nightmar

In this video, we'll take a behind-the-scenes look at the development process, including the inspiration and challenges that the team faced while creating the game. From concept art to programming, we'll explore the many facets of game development and the hard work that goes into creating a truly terrifying experience for players. Join us as we take a journey into the world of Nightmar and discover the secrets behind its creation.

Pictures

Team

Andreas Wrife

"I've been working on the level design, inventing the layout and building up the terrain. Filling the environment with props and creating the key elements, literally. Using Blender to create and texture models such as the CCTVs. In Unity I also worked with the player and audience interactions. I also wrote most of the texts for the website."

Pontus Asp

"I've been involved in various aspects of the project, but my main focus has been on the technical side, such as quaternion math for CCTV cameras, bug fixing and refactoring. At the beginning, me and Andreas Sjödin established the VR integration and designed the initial hello world map, which heavily influenced the final design. Additionally, I created the project website."

https://pontusasp.se/

Andreas Sjödin

"I've programmed a large part of the games' logic: Player movement, pause/death/victory functionality, key pickups, etc. I've also created most of the custom textures, sounds, and camera effects within Unity. The demo and making-of videos on this page are created by me, with the aid of Andreas Wrife."

Wouter Büthker

"I have worked a lot on the game logic involving the monster. Creating the AIs logic: Random pathing, chasing the player and the mechanics involving dying. Small level decorations were also done by me. Besides, I implemented the animations and rigging for the characters, including a revamp to the movement logic to support the animations. Finally, I worked on the technical challenge of having a different controllable perspective for the audience."

Joel

"I implemented a freeze mechanic in which you could shout “freeze” and the monster would stop in its tracks. I helped with the implementation of the audio. Plastic SCM setup was my area of expertise which after I got set up helped the group to collaborate."

Goals and Motivation

One of the key factors driving this project was the requirement to allow the audience to peek into the virtual world where the player would be. They should have control over their perspective and perhaps also be able to interact with the user. With this in mind we envisioned a game in which the audience controlled CCTV cameras and saw the player running around in a mansion or dungeon. Help out or hinder the player from achieving their goal. The idea quickly developed into a horror game where the player would be haunted by a monster. Thus one of the goals was to make the experience scary. For this project we thought it would be great to implement a Virtual Reality game in Unity to obtain some expertise in that area. We also wanted to work more with graphics than interaction for this project to gain a better understanding of what makes a game look interesting and scary.

Explanation and Justification

Graphics
Since the last project had the interaction elements at its centre, this time we wanted to focus more on implementing interesting graphical effects.Trying out different texturing styles, using particle systems, post-processing effects, camera filters and environmental attributes. For the CCTV cameras, their UI allows the audience to see the entire map of the mansion, understand which camera they're on, and where it's located. The cameras also utilise post processing to obtain a grainy effect seen on surveillance films. For the player, the environment is completely different, having reduced visuals using fog. The models have been developed with different texture attributes and animations to emphasise their importance.

Interaction
Due to the new requirement and the challenging previous project, the project was opted into being set in Virtual Reality using a HTC vive pro. This since the requirement of having the audience being able to have their own perspective of the virtual world the project felt like it would be best implemented in virtual reality. As well as, the team's first project was made on a table with an interactable screen called the Pixelsense, where phicons using fiducials stood at the forefront of the interacting experience. It was time to switch over to another element of interaction. With the game made the interaction aspects are set between the player and the keys, the player and the door, the monster and the player and the player and the cctv cameras.

Challenges and Obstacles

The biggest challenge for this project was the transition over to a virtual reality environment. Whilst other groups continued using VR for their second project as well, our group started with establishing the fundamentals. This new setting also made the game more challenging to develop since testing required the team's presence on campus. With more groups working with VR but with a set amount of desktop PC and VR headsets, this became an even bigger obstacle. After the project was finished the group had developed the game on four different pc:s on campus, being flung around between the setups as the outcast group.

Lessons Learned

When developing in Unity, in a team, it requires some setup to make new changes between members close to seamless. Using Plastic SCM made development much easier, to the extent that it felt like a requirement for future projects made in Unity. Using the SteamVR plugin in Unity is the GOTO way of developing with VR. Their easy to use interface and test scenes helped a bunch in understanding the virtual reality process. Setting up different scenes for virtual reality and desktop versions, developing them side by side keeping them separate yet still connected, was also a teaching moment throughout the project.