@Pus In Boots - good point.
@ButterFingers - classic, good points made also.
@Troy Chambers - I dont make horror based games, and not sure if any are on the to do list. However good luck with your game. When I first saw this thread I thought it was about scare tips in general. However I see this is about a game you are making.
Anyway, here is a couple of ideas (may have been used before, however as stated I dont play much horror, time mainly is the issue.
Oh, sorry for the ultra long post, once i got going.......
1. Having someone in your game you see, and try to shoot, yet disappears before you reach the player or you can fully kill them.
*Update- what i mean is use a lit up area, like on a bridge or hall wall. and have the enemy in front of you, say 4 or more blocks away and have them on a way point to move backwards while still facing you (A floating enemy would be needed) and have them disappear into darkness, so the enemy spawn life is set to the right amount of time, so it is not noticable when they disappear. Timing would have to be calculated on the player being able to move towards the enemy so it doesnt mess up the effect. You could then have the player thinking that this guy/thing/or whatever is going to pop up somewhere, kinda like someone is chasing you, and you couldnt kill it type of thing.
2. Using 1 enemy a couple of times in one room, on trigger zones.
The enemy would have to be horror based, or a main enemy boss on your level, as using a human would look dodgy i think. Maybe a posessed human could work.
Anyway, what i mean is you could give the appearance that they have powers to morph into another area.
The only thing i can think of that limits this, is the enemy death annimation. Someone might want to try and make a enemy in 2 formats.
1 with a death, standing up (and set the death to fade straight away) Then having another model the same with the full death animation to finish the fight.
Also another problem i see is being able to scatter the triggerzone, and so they can be triggered without moving the player.
Or a simple solution is to have gaps in the middle of the fighting. so that when the enemy disappears the first time, its not until you walk again that they re-appear. (haha, this would not work though, as the player could trigger them all, while fighting the first.)
haha, here's something that could work though, if the respawning enemys were set to fades on death and maybe a custom animation on death. you could have a room with a evil enemy in place thats hard to kill, and have another version of itself either in front or behind. respawning itself, as the player walks around shooting the main one and the respawning ones are not so tuff. to make it look like the main enemy is making everything happen.
Thank Heavenly Sword for that one.
Again, alot of this would have been done before, but just some ideas for everyone. Sorry if these ideas have been mentioned before by others.
Also my final scare tip, that i think would work well.
*EDIT - jtruls, sorry i didnt see your post, yeah!
3. Place a enemy (say the girl idea made by someone else / fear) A window would work really well or a 2nd level. Have the enemy placed to do nothing but stare.
Either set the SpawnLife to a small number, say 20-40 maybe. not sure. And the enemys death to a fast fade, quick disappear if shot.
So that either the player can shoot the enemy or they will fade away.
Doing it on a higher level would elimate half of the disappear animation.
Make a room or something on the higher level, so that you venture up there.
Have no one in the room or area, and once walking half way in, make a trigger to have the enemy (say girl) appear right behind you. (maybe have them not moving, so when the player flips around to walk back out. Boom, they are there in front of you. Even if they didnt attack, it would freak me out.
Maybe i dont know what im talking about. hahaha.
I do watch my movies though, and hellraiser allways was a classic for me, not because of pinhead or the crazy cd guy. more so the mystery that surrounded the box.
Good luck with your game.
