John Richardson
Game Designer/Environment artist
GM_Ghosthunt - 2009
Gm_Ghosthunt began as an experimental release. I was interested in seeing how players would react when placed in an environment with random events and jump scares. The map was extremely well received by the community and taught me a lot about player behaviour.
Design Principles
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A large explorable map
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Multiplayer friendly
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Randomised events
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Unique gameplay function or gimmick
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Replay value
Production
Misc. images from editor during creation.
Event Managment
Most of the events in this map needed to occur randomly.
I achieved this by telling the trigger mechanism to fire within a set interval. The engine will choose a random float between the minimum and maximum interval number and then fire the event when it reaches that number. Once the event has fired it will reset and countdown to another random number within the interval.
For example, the majority of events in this map will trigger within 10 minutes of the map being created - but when they trigger is down to the engine.
My idea was to make the players invovlment with these events coincidental with their presence. With the inclusion of these events and their unique triggers, the map stops being a 'theme-park' ride and instead becomes an unpredictable and dangerous environment for players to explore.
Map gimmick - Camera system
I felt the need to introduce something unseen/unheard of to increase the reputation of the map.
To do this, I included a fully functional camera system. In the main and only safe room, the players are given several monitors and are able to cycle through various cameras placed around the map. They are also given a moveable camera that they can position by themselves. Events can appear on the monitors making watching them just as interesting as exploring the map.
A common timer function in Source.
The camera setup.
Release
The map was released in October 2009. It exceeded all of my expectations with its reception.
The map gained notoriety after being featured in countless Youtube videos. When my inbox began to fill up asking for a sequel, I knew I'd found a niche in the medium.
Over the course of four years on Garrysmod.org, it exceeded a million downloads. Garrysmod.org has since been closed and the map is now hosted on Steam.