Dev Log #1

Hello everyone! 

Today I have pushed my first multiplayer game that I've been working the last 2 weeks. I have never experienced anything with multiplayer development and this was my first time I managed to finally try myself with it. 


I know that many wants something specific and wow, but I was more interested in old school horror games, the ones that I was playing like 10-15 years ago, they were simple, fast and fun to play in coop and decided to come up with the same idea to make this game. Of course I have plans to improve this game and make it more interesting with more mechanics and improved gameplay. 

Why Mannequins You may think?
Tbh, idk, it was just an idea in my head to make something simple and I was thinking what entity I should add to the game that would be chasing players.. and then it came up to my head, what if I would use mannequins, some people might think like "Ah mannequins... What can be scary from them?" But this is the fact... You might think they are just simple mannequins, but they actually can provide a fear in specific areas, especially if you lost in some dark woods or in some abandoned mall or something like that, they actually are scary... At first point you think its nothing, but the more you wandering, the more you are starting to have a feeling that someone is always watching you... Plus there are people who also fears mannequins and this idea just came up what if I add them to the game and make some eerie atmosphere, where players will have to look, but not for too long, cause looking at mannequins drains your sanity? And thats how the game basically born in a very simple way. Its not comfortable when you know that they are always watching, they can see you, they can move when you don't see... 

Currently the game is in very early access because I thought it would be nice to release it and allow others to test and play,  find out if you like it, idk even if its simply made, but this game even reminded me an old school vibe from those old horror games. I made a lot tests of the  game and mainly I'm afraid there might be networking issues, maybe some sync issues between clients, but I really hope, its fine, especially that I was making this game fully alone. 

Making decisions with AI help?
You may blame me, you can tell me its shame, but I'm passionate about AI. I don't see it as a replacement or similar... AI for me is a helper, when I'm stuck with things, it comes to help, this game was built using few AI's with help. ChatGPT was used to help improve the game story and improve the codes. MeshyAI was used for 3D models, there are 2 models created by AI (standing torch and altar). ElevenLabs was used to create mannequin sounds and player footsteps. Yes its not perfect, but at some point you can actually get help and receive your desired things with those AIs instead of using the existing sounds that mostly repeats in many games, this is really helpful if you are a solo dev and don't have much skills in other areas. 

Of course most things created by AI, you always need to tweak manually. 

Improving myself
With this project I know that I will be trying to move on forward and expanding my skills and knowledge in mirror networking to make something interesting for everyone to play. Mostly what would help me to improve is yours feedback about the game, what is bad, what to change, what to improve, what to add and so on. This is what actually makes the indie games better when there are communication between members and developer and when developer listens. 


I hope you read this till this part and hoping you have a great time in the game and help me improving by leaving a feedback here or in my discord channel about the game.
Link to discord:
https://discord.gg/M3WYHq7Fnb