YEAR 2 - BA2b - Ghosts, Gravestones, Facial Expressions and Rare Hats

https://youtu.be/9DNcQQS90YY - Go to this link

So I've just implemented souls into the game. When a doll dies their soul becomes a ghost and flies away. Occasionally if a doll is particularly immoral, their ghost sticks around and haunts the other house mates (Not implemented yet). I also plan to allow dolls to capture souls and reincarnate dead dolls or sacrifice them to Lucifer in return for rewards but I don't have time to implement this before the deadline.

Players can place dead dolls in the back garden to bury them and a gravestone will appear in their place.
There's a picture of a dog in the kitchen looking out towards a gravestone. I'm using environmental story telling to imply that the dog is buried there. I'm also using the placement of the gravestone to imply to the player that they have the ability to bury dolls there.

I've also made expression to give the dolls. The plan was to have these expressions quite extensive and unique to each doll but we ran out of time. Currently all the expressions do is show how happy the doll is.

I made all these doll faces. I tried out a few in game but I chose the ones I did because they were the most expressive. I decided the one with the open mouth was too goofy. It is important that the faces are expressive because they are difficult to see from how far zoomed out the camera is. In game they are still hard to see and when I carry on with the game after the project is over I'll make sure they're easier to see.


Still though, I feel like the doll faces bring a lot to the game. It's easier to sympathize with the doll faces. I found myself feeling bad when I made the dolls sad. I think they would have been even more powerful if they each had their own individual face types.

In order to make the dolls more individual I asked Ben to model me some hats to give the dolls.

I made it so the dolls have a rare chance of starting with the hats. This is because I wanted the hats to be somewhat of a rarity. I think it's exciting when you happen across a rare occurrence in a game and it's the kind of thing that players share with their friends and over social media which is obviously good for the game.