[WIP] Castle Clark (formerly The Prussian)

[Sel]

Yeah honestly.

[triadtimes]

I need two-three testers to try out some new levels. PM me for details. Some new images have also been added!

[triadtimes]

Check the first post. Part One is out, thank you to the people who played the demo.

[Sel]

oh, I did promise to play this, I'll give it a go tonight and post back later.

[Sel]

Alright, your lighting needs a lot of work. I find it hard to believe you'll find someone interested in doing all the 'detail' work for you, but hey that's just me. Either way here is why we don't use box lights to light individual rooms.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3332789/Amnesia/...ot_000.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3332789/Amnesia/...ot_001.jpg

Generally you're better off using entities that produce lights, like you have done, and using a giant box light to keep everything just out of pure black, then using lots of point lights to make your lighting interesting. Look at the stock maps, they're great for learning about this kind of stuff. You're also missing billboards on your windows. Additionally you should keep in mind that there's two mansion sets, so try to vary your environments a bit when you can. Finally, the rubble/destruction in the study is pretty bad.

But enough visuals, lets talk about everything else. You hid a note in a drawer, none of your rooms are labeled, despite being referred to in these notes, and you spawn a monster in the first 2 minutes. These are all terrible decisions. First off, anything relevant to the story (notes) should be more or less impossible for the player to not notice. Second, you refer to rooms by name in these notes and then it's impossible to tell what's what. Third, just don't do this. No player is going to be immersed nearly enough within such a short time for it to ever be worth pulling out one of the biggest scares in the game so early on. Remember how it took an hour or two before you even saw a monster in Amnesia? There was a reason for this. Anyway, it took me a while before I finally got the key to the study, there was very little(?) indication that there was something hidden behind the paintings in whatever that room was, and all it did was dump me infront of another locked door with no indication what I was supposed to do, so I just quit there after checking the rooms over again to see if there was any sort of hint.

There's a pretty good chance it'd be worth scrapping this and starting over and over until your able to create something reasonably close to the quality of the original Amnesia levels, which hopefully wouldn't take too long to learn to do, considering they're all there to examine and learn from (which you definitely need to take some time to do)

[triadtimes]

(01-19-2011 01:59 AM)Sel Wrote:  Alright, your lighting needs a lot of work. I find it hard to believe you'll find someone interested in doing all the 'detail' work for you, but hey that's just me. Either way here is why we don't use box lights to light individual rooms.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3332789/Amnesia/...ot_000.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3332789/Amnesia/...ot_001.jpg

Generally you're better off using entities that produce lights, like you have done, and using a giant box light to keep everything just out of pure black, then using lots of point lights to make your lighting interesting. Look at the stock maps, they're great for learning about this kind of stuff. You're also missing billboards on your windows. Additionally you should keep in mind that there's two mansion sets, so try to vary your environments a bit when you can. Finally, the rubble/destruction in the study is pretty bad.

But enough visuals, lets talk about everything else. You hid a note in a drawer, none of your rooms are labeled, despite being referred to in these notes, and you spawn a monster in the first 2 minutes. These are all terrible decisions. First off, anything relevant to the story (notes) should be more or less impossible for the player to not notice. Second, you refer to rooms by name in these notes and then it's impossible to tell what's what. Third, just don't do this. No player is going to be immersed nearly enough within such a short time for it to ever be worth pulling out one of the biggest scares in the game so early on. Remember how it took an hour or two before you even saw a monster in Amnesia? There was a reason for this. Anyway, it took me a while before I finally got the key to the study, there was very little(?) indication that there was something hidden behind the paintings in whatever that room was, and all it did was dump me infront of another locked door with no indication what I was supposed to do, so I just quit there after checking the rooms over again to see if there was any sort of hint.

There's a pretty good chance it'd be worth scrapping this and starting over and over until your able to create something reasonably close to the quality of the original Amnesia levels, which hopefully wouldn't take too long to learn to do, considering they're all there to examine and learn from (which you definitely need to take some time to do)

Thank you for the tips on lighting, I'll start practicing on that. I've never used the billboards before, so we'll see how that goes. Also what would you recommend for identification of a room? Signs are good but they would seem out of place in the normal mansion setting.

You brought up a very good point I haven't heard before about the notes/diaries in hard to find/uncommon places. Yes this does seem like a bad idea to have storyline-advancing notes in strange places. And really I just wanted to put something behind a painting in retrospect I should have given more indication to that, whoops.

The part about immersion is interesting, yes it takes roughly an hour before you see a monster in Amnesia but I don't think that many custom stories go on for multiple hours. What would you say is an appropriate amount of time for immersion in a custom story?

Scraping the story now would be extremely saddening for me so I think before that happens I need to try and salvage it. We'll see what happens once your ideas are put into play, maybe the story can be saved, maybe not.

In any case thank you for the help.

[Sel]

(01-19-2011 02:30 AM)triadtimes Wrote:  Thank you for the tips on lighting, I'll start practicing on that. I've never used the billboards before, so we'll see how that goes. Also what would you recommend for identification of a room? Signs are good but they would seem out of place in the normal mansion setting.

I seem to recall them being in the archives in Amnesia, which uses the mansion set, maybe a simple sign model on a door, or a map somewhere in the level?

(01-19-2011 02:30 AM)triadtimes Wrote:  The part about immersion is interesting, yes it takes roughly an hour before you see a monster in Amnesia but I don't think that many custom stories go on for multiple hours. What would you say is an appropriate amount of time for immersion in a custom story?

That depends heavily upon the environments, I was immersed in Amnesia almost immediately from the start, and right now as your environments stand they're not constructed well enough to pull that off.

However, even when they're immersed, it doesn't mean that it's time to scare them, and definitely not with one of the biggest scares in the game. Ambient noises are significantly scarier, and the tension of not seeing anything is usually far better a tool to use.

(01-19-2011 02:30 AM)triadtimes Wrote:  Scraping the story now would be extremely saddening for me so I think before that happens I need to try and salvage it. We'll see what happens once your ideas are put into play, maybe the story can be saved, maybe not.

I know it's not a particularly nice feeling to drop something and start over, but generally it's for the better and the time you would spend salvaging are nearly as long as, or longer than the time it would take to start over from the beginning, and make something better with what you've learned.

[Mervin]

Are you working on Part two? Because I loved part one

[Solarn]

I don't know what Sel's problem is, but please don't listen to him. There are a lot of people who enjoyed your custom story and I for one think that it doesn't need to be scrapped just to meet one person's standards. Not everything needs to be professional quality to be enjoyable and if Sel is incapable of looking beyond the small imperfections and the different pacing, he doesn't need to play it.

His suggestions as to placing notes in drawers and such are worth considering, but please don't scrap this story just because he was being obnoxious about it. Please continue with Part Two.

[Ghostflame]

Yeah, theres a few errors here and there, but Sel's getting a little too happy. All this requires are a few fixes, and nothing massively major. I for one greatly enjoyed this, so, please, by all means, continue with part 2.