Silent Hill
I'm making this new "standalone" table based on my favorite game series and the Silent Hill movie. My intent is to have progression through the main events of the movie, while having the things that make the game iconic.
- foggy town
- darkness
- flashlight
- different locations (alley, school, hospital, church)
- otherworld levels (rusty, blood)
- creepy monsters
- creepy sounds
- iconic Akira Yamaoka music
The movie videos are not part of the table (yet). I only added them for this demo, as PinEvent will be the very last thing to add to the table when it's done (a very long ways to go).
Sounds and Music
If there is one thing the Silent Hill series is known for, is the amazingly beautiful and disturbing sounds and music from the extremely talented Akira Yamaoka.
I bought every soundtrack I could get over the years. The number of sound files made for these games is crazy! Silent Hill 2 alone has many 100s of sound files. I'm going through ALL of them and the other games to find the sounds I need for Silent Hill.
View attachment 19812
While doing "research"... I decided to do some sound recordings from the games to use. I've played SH2, SH3, SH4, Homecoming on my PC (which "today" is a real benefit with 4K, 60fps, Enhanced mods, etc)
Wow! Almost 20 years later, and I still have my original save game files!
Playing these now is like travelling back in time. It's awesome!
View attachment 19813
Silent Hill Textures
There's something freaky and cool about going through textures of a 20 year old game to use in a 13 year old pinball editor to be played on almost anything modern including a VR headset.
If anything, it makes me really appreciate the talent of texture artists, and how far ahead Team Silent was back then.
View attachment 19814
Monster models
I'll be adding many of the monsters from the movie / games. Most will be animated to some degree.
Straight Jacket
The "straight jacket / armless man" from the movies is tricky. I was able to extract the original model, but couldn't use the original texture as the UV wrapping info is lost with the extraction.
So with the help of a very talented VPX table author / modeler... he was able to fix up the model (half the polygons were flipped) and create a very cool looking texture to try to make it look more like the movie version (on the left). The model had a few slits in it, so he made them bloody looking, as well adding the cool bump mapped skin and veins! You can see how it will actually look in FP-BAM on the right.
The hard part will be figuring out how to animate this guy since he doesn't have "arms"...which makes using Mixamo for auto rigging and animation not possible, until I figure out another solution.
View attachment 19816
Grey Children
This is also a bit tricky because there are no detailed models to use from the original game as Silent Hill 1 was on PS1 which looks like this. :)
View attachment 19817
So I decided to find other models that I could use that were close enough, and maybe distort them to look more like the movie version. Here's what I have so far on the left compared to the movie on the right. I found a Resident Evil monster model, used Mixamo to auto-rig it into a T Pose...then used Blender to sacle the head to be bigger and twist it a bit.
Yes, I know it looks more like Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th Part 1 (when he jumped out of the lake)... but it's the best I can do unless a better option comes along. :)
View attachment 19815
...and more monsters yet to come!
Foggy Town
Silent Hill the game and movie changes from foggy to the darkness / otherworld version of the same location. I "intend" to do the same for this table. How well that will work out we'll have to see.
This is where I am at currently with the foggy town look. This will be changing as you progress throughout the game.
View attachment 21160
There is MUCH more to do and see... I promise you, you haven't seen anything like this in virtual pinball before!