Hello, modding community!

I'd like to introduce to you my new mod Four Hours to Midnight - the thriller of the old south. The mod is a total-conversion with all new objects, characters, animals, weapons, vegetation, and enemies for the player to encounter. I've been hard at work writing this story since the early Autumn of 2010, making sure every bit of it is perfect and well thought out. I have the beginning, the end, and just about everything in-between written, I just have a few parts left to finish - about one-and-a-half levels. I've read Game Level Design by Ed Byrne to get a good understanding of how things should go together properly, and I'm currently looking for more titles similar to it. I've been stock piling reference images like a library to spark every wild idea I can possibly have.

So here it is, a quick sneak peak at the storyline and plot of Four Hours to Midnight. Please keep in mind that the story is much, much deeper and involved than this, but I don't want to give too much away.


Storyline:

Olivia Nightingale and her father, Gilbert, are invited to her uncle’s plantation to attend a garden party in honor of the 100th anniversary of his eerily extravagant mansion –Desmarais Manor. The date also coincides with Olivia’s twentieth birthday, and the disappearance of one of her dearest childhood friends.
At the party, the morning passes by in a dreamy and blissful blur, with Olivia and the mansion at the very center of the festivities. Olivia soon stumbles upon a tale involving the mansion’s long and dark history, one which had been kept a secret for one-hundred-years. After hearing the tale, the day seems very distant and far away. Feeling as though a secret deep within her has been awoken, and unable to suppress her hunger for mystery, Olivia sneaks off while the other ladies are taking their noontime nap and heads for the mansion’s enormous attic. There, she discovers a bizarre room full of an odd assortment of items – ancient-looking books, voodoo dolls, and peculiar portraits of eccentric-looking people. To an already intrigued Olivia, the most curious aspect of this room is a circular shape drawn in sand on the floor.
Through a small series of events, Olivia accidentally casts a powerful spell read from a book titled The Book of Time, and is knocked unconscious and sent into a dark and unfamiliar world.
Olivia finds herself in an ominous yet eerily romantic dreamland, inhabited by long deceased spirits and strange creatures of both nightmares and local folklore. The spirits, all seeming to know who she is, tell Olivia that she has four hours to find four objects that will reverse the spell she has mistakenly cast and return her home. “Only one object will appear every one hour,” she is told, “do not fail to acquire one, for it will never reappear.” So at the stroke of eight-o-clock, with only a trail of vague riddles and odd contraptions to follow, Olivia sets off to find the four objects that are her only way home.


Plot:

The player will play the role of Olivia Nightingale - a twenty-year-old girl who's found herself thrown into a strange and unfamiliar dream world. The player must navigate through the winding halls and rooms of the now dark and spiritually inhabited Desmarais Manor and dense forests of the Louisiana bayou, in order to find all four objects needed to reverse the spell accidentally cast by Olivia. The path the player must follow will be dangerous, forcing them to think before acting, decipher clues and riddles, and brave the nightmarish creatures of the bayou.


Status and Features:

Mod Features:

• An epic and complex storyline and plot.
• No HUD - handheld navigation, such as an in-game compass or map, only.
• New and advanced player to NPC interaction.
• Built on the CryENGINE3
• All new weapons.
• New characters and animals - spirits and other creatures.
• Completely new game environment.
• All new objects.
• All new vehicles - such as horse/horse and buggy.
• New textures and materials.
• New animations.
• Custom soundtrack.
• Custom sounds.
• Custom dialog

Mod Genre:

Mystery/puzzle/thriller/first-person/third-person shooter.

Mod Status:

Current Status - 10/23/2011: 7%


Media:

Concept Sketches:


Concept Sketch 01: Attic at midday.


Assets:


1841 six-pounder, smooth-bore field cannon.


1841 six-pounder, smooth-bore field cannon with parrot barrel.


Links:

• 1841 Six-pounder Field Cannon

Feedback:

Please leave feedback and tell me what you think! All comments and critique are welcome, as long as they're friendly!

That looks very big, very good (I'd love to play in that period), but also very ambitious. I wish you good luck for all the work you need.

Thanks! You're right, this is a very ambitious project for me to undertake. But I have full confidence that, if I take my time, and get a mod team together, this can be done. It just may take a little time.

You'd better start soon then because I want this before the end of the year xD

Thanks!

I don't think I'll be done by the end of this year, though. Still a little writing to do, at the moment.

interesting, looking forward to this!

This sounds very original... A really nice fairy tale feeling to it .

By the way, the word tail is used to describe the tail on an animal. The correct spelling, in this context, is tale

Looking good, I'l keep an eye on this

Thanks, guys!

I'm currently going over some of the entities I'll be putting in this mod, mostly health entities since there will be no nanosuit. I'll be looking for a good concept artist soon, once I get all of my work together.


Un_dead: Thanks for noticing, mate! I got writing too many things at once and didn't notice it. Not a very good way for me to look professional. I fixed it, though.

I like the story set up very much, and I must confess this really strikes me like the perfect story for a Myst type of game, a puzzle based game, rather than action/adventure.

Hope you'll be able to turn this into something good, very good

For exterior environment reference look no further than in the movie: Interview with a Vampire.

Huge oak trees with dangling moss--you probably already know this.

sounds like a very ambitious and awesome mod. I hope this becomes reality

UPDATE: The main post has been edited. The story has been revised slightly, but the overall theme and plot is still there.

Thanks for all the comments, guys!

Kridian: Thanks for the suggestion! That movie is a very good reference for this kind of theme. I believe that was filmed at Oak Alley, in Vacherie, Louisiana.

/moved as per request

Thanks, man!

Good luck, this is going to be a huge project, but I would definitely put a lot of time into this if it gets released! It is such a unique idea.