Good setting

[shadowmancer471]

SO! I'm entering for a short mapping competition at PlanetPhillip
I am required to make a short horror map in the space of a month, but I have a slight issue.

Anyone got any ideas for settings?

It has to be doable in a month of hl2, so nothing too out of the way
It has to be horror based/have the correct atmosphere

But my main problem is originality

-Castle: Done in Amnesia
-Hospital: Done in many games/films
-School: Get out

So yeah, I was wondering if anyone has any inspired settings I could use/manipulate?

[LordDz]

I've always loved games which take explore the mad theme, so why not take the player, starting at a normal atmosphere, in a mad world where everything floats around?

A bit like this one:

[Jangalomph]

Image doesn't work lordDz.

[Ark11]

Abandoned Jail? Abandoned Mansion? Abandoned Factory? Abandoned War Bunker? Pretty much think of a location, then think of it as if it were abandoned and see if it's scary. Of course you can't go and do any location like Abandoned Taco Shop or Abandoned Day Care Centre, it has to be something with potentual to be scary.

[shadowmancer471]

Eh, I was trying to get away from the whole 'abandoned' idea.
nevertheless I've got something now, thanks anyway guys

[Gary]

Occupied||Clean == Fail
Abandoned & Dirty == Win

[Kubata]

Actually, you'd be surprised. Everything that's scary is abandoned and dirty, but if you can pull off going against the grain and somehow having creepy elements then I think you'd draw some attention.

[Zecrah]

Abandoned Jail? Abandoned Mansion? Abandoned Factory? Abandoned War Bunker? Pretty much think of a location, then think of it as if it were abandoned and see if it's scary. Of course you can't go and do any location like Abandoned Taco Shop or Abandoned Day Care Centre, it has to be something with potentual to be scary.

Abandoned Day Care Centre? Of course you can. It's the same reason they take schools, hospitals or childrens' parks and make them scary. If you take something people associate with fun, safety and generally 'nice' and turn it upside down it creates a better sense of fear. You're going against established logic.

[LordDz]

Actually, you'd be surprised. Everything that's scary is abandoned and dirty, but if you can pull off going against the grain and somehow having creepy elements then I think you'd draw some attention.

A clean shopping mall with wierd flashbacks etc?`Could be pretty neat.

[PhoeniX1992]

You should play through 'Dayhard', it was this mad hl2 mod which had a real scary scene in an old hotel. Scared the f* out of me. A few ideas:

It seemed as if the hotel had two versions and sometimes you'd just walk (probably through a trigger brush) which would teleport you to the second, weird version. It had a lot in common with Resident Evil, in which the whole world changes after the air raid alarm (if you know what I'm talking about). Textures (especially pictures and paintings) would change in a fucked up way, blood everywhere, monsters, flickering lighting, the screamer effect (unsettling music and screams) and it would often screw up your fov, making everything seem to happen and move faster while seeming either further or away or closer.

[Ark11]

I never really found flickering lights scary, just annoying. When ever i saw one i felt like i was on the verge of an epileptic fit.

[WhiteDevil]

Flickering light can be used to set a mood if done right. In games you usually see the average rave party lights which indeed are just annoying.
In the movies flickering lights are always this slow random pulse which gives you somewhat equal ammount of light and darkness and they usually time something scary between the flickers. That's how they should be used instead of a rave party.
Like a flickering light near a painting which would show this very creepy looking portrait or a text smeared with blood after every few flickers something like seen in Amnesia, subtle but powerful.. hell, I almost shat myself when I noticed the painting was changed in Amnesia in the torture chambers, that game rules.

[Epifire]

Abandoned Day Care Centre? Of course you can. It's the same reason they take schools, hospitals or childrens' parks and make them scary. If you take something people associate with fun, safety and generally 'nice' and turn it upside down it creates a better sense of fear. You're going against established logic.

Agreed. If you have some thing that was completely opposite of what your current horror theme is, it is the best way of adding to the effect. Another view that I would add is the before and after method. Here is an example. Take a scenario that you think would fit a horror once it hits it's after state, but here is the catch, let the player experience some of the before, and then let him return afterward.

Once you do that, you have a more fuller emphasis on how much has really happened in your "horror world". Then your more like, oh crap what did I miss, and then it raises the tension altogether. Really in depth variation could say make the player feel more emotionally attached to the first installment, and then ripping that up in the second. It all sums up to letting the player rather more, live the experience.

[Mr. Happy]

Make it on a haunted boat!

[Chopium]

Whatever it is, it can't be as simple as a setting. Something in the narrative has to be affecting the place. If it's a school, what if it's flooded, falling apart, being renovated, covered in plastic sheeting for asbestos removal, upside down, mazeified, empty, re-purposed, on fire, burned, covered in etchings, infested, infected, alive, occupied by something out of this world, connected to something outside of this reality, becoming the idea of itself, being drawn out through narrative literally, being constructed, fake, and illusion, a movie set, a theme park interpretation, teleported somewhere it shouldn't be, split in half, filling the contours of a shifting earth, floating in space, in a computer game, in a story book, in a movie reality, is a fake duplicate, a trap, a nuclear testing model, a war simulation model, stuck in a tree, covered in feces, inverted, inside out, inside a whale, inside a massive run-on sentence with little regard for its own direction, inside someones mind, inside someone elses mind, inside a dream inside a dream inside a dream inside a dream, outside of a habitable space, in the center of the sun, filled with invisible zombies, filled with visible zombies, is a zombie, isn't a zombie, is haunted with a urban legend feeding public fear, occupied by the military, being used as an evacuation center, was used as a cold war shelter.

By giving the setting, or a piece of the setting, more character, you are making it a set piece. In a game like left 4 dead, all the environments flow from set piece to set piece, through extremely generic environments.