Frictional Games Forum (read-only)

Hello everyone,
I just finished the game for the first time, really enjoyed all of its unique elements, effects, and challenges, and the lingering feeling of terror that it manages to sustain almost without a gap.

One thing though, that really bugged me throughout the entire game was the lack of a sense of compass direction, distance, or overall position. Perhaps this is intentional - players have a tendency to think of mapped areas as "safe" or somesuch - but it also prevents one from feeling the true size of the environment. I've taken a few minutes to remove the text and comp together the excellent line maps from HideTheDecay on deviantart, and this is the overall layout I've come up with (attached to post).

As you can see, there's a lot of overlap between many areas in the castle, and there doesn't seem to be much of an overall "shape" to the exterior of the building. It seems to have roughly half a kilometer of linear distance from end-to-end, which is large even by castle standards. I had a little trouble figuring out the orientation of the Nave to the Sewer, but after reviewing some playthrough videos I believe this is correct.

Popular opinion seems to suggest that the large, unusable cathedral doors found throughout the castle must be connected in some way, such as between the Chancel and the Cistern entrance. But this seems unlikely as the great distance traveled Sewer places them very far apart, and they seem not even to share the same orientation. Ignoring this and placing them next to each other introduces other problems - the "bottomless" floor of the Chancel is now directly above the halls of the sewer.

There are also some confusing geometries to be found in the entrance hall - for instance the Refinery passes right through the laboratory and wine cellars, and the Archive tunnels are found nowhere near the Archives or Old Archives (which are nicely stacked on top of one another).

Surely some of this is due to errors in scale on part of the mapmaker, but the overall layout of the castle doesn't seem to have been a major concern for the level designers. What do you guys think? Was there ever a big-picture topology of the castle that the developers used, and if so is this an incorrect reading of the layout? Or did they simply prefer to design individual spaces without regard for their geometric relation to the whole? I find this result rather frustrating, as it prevents us from picturing the setting of the game from anywhere but the first person.

Thanks for reading.

Did you do it from scratch or used some references from the draft map in super_secret.rar? I always was curious what is behind that door in the "hidden" room on the to Agrippa. Obviously it is the only actual entrance in this room, through which you are supposed to enter it as a normal man (not everyone is do it Daniel-way), but still... curiosity.

I've updated the map with what I believe to be the correct orientation of the Nave and following areas. This leads to a much more sensible overall layout. I'm sure the scale is somewhat off, but this leads to the rather neat finale of having the Orb Chamber directly beneath or very near the back hall. I've added some labels to make the map easier to understand as well - though I believe "Main Hall" should say "Entry Hall." It does leave open the question of what shortcut Alexander and Daniel take to avoid the sewers, but one can suppose an unpictured hallway that leads from the Cistern entrance to the caved-in hallway of the nave.

Kein, I hadn't known about the super_secret.rar file, thanks for the hint! Although the maps in that document only cover the first chapter, they show a process that supports the theory of the devs thinking through each area individually rather than designing the whole castle at once.

Here's one little gem I found in that document:

Quote:This map also has some short enAlexanderers with the servants and all shall be easy to avoid.

It looks like they did a find and replace of "Count" for "Alexander" in this document at one point. Perhaps he was the Count of Brennenburg before he became the baron?

Like you said, I don't think they had an overall castle layout, but worked on rooms individually, as some areas overlap (guest room and study being the easiest to spot), in the archive tunnels there are two different corridors and doors that lead to the same spot in back hall, and according to your map, the back hall is facing a different direction compared to entrance hall, and is actually in front of the main entrance gate (you'd expect it to be at the back of the castle, and the stairs facing the same direction as entrance hall I think)

Very impressive map I must say. But I don't think the creators had the logical aspect of the entire map design as a priority when they made the game. I didn't think about it when I played it at least, since the immersion, flashback scenes and scares made me lose my sense of direction now and then.

There might be corridors or areas intended between the "area doors" that they didn't bother to put in, for a lack of actual purpose. There are a bunch of locked doors that can't be opened (in the storage, prisons and so on). So we are not given the entire structure of the castle as a player. Also, a lot of the map subsists of secret passages and sewers etc, which would explain the lack of logic in the designs.

Really cool map tough!

Really cool, but it's incorrect. The elevator only has one door which means the prison and the back hall are in the same place at different altitudes, so the entire rest of the map needs to face the other way.

Nice catch, Bridge! Here's an updated comp with the elevator and preceding areas rotated accordingly.

All credit for the actual mapmaking goes to HideTheDecay, I'm just moving layers around in pixelmator.

I think we can safely assume that Euclidean geometry was not a chief concern for the designers, but it's still nice to get a sense of the castle as it "exists" inasmuch as the player character can traverse it only one way. One thinks back to big puzzle games like Myst, where seemingly subtle connections between places were later used for much greater effect, or Metroid, where knowing where you are is the whole key to solving its maze. That doesn't matter as much here, so long as you know the shape of the area you're currently exploring, no puzzles should elude you. This is maybe a bit more like Doom or Quake style design, where each level may as well exist in an alternate universe.

Can you release the maps level by level? It's really difficult to read the map this way. Also it seems like the prison is now in the wrong place (I really can't tell, it's so cluttered).

All the maps come from hidethedecay on deviantart. The individual maps are much more useful if you're actually trying to play through the game:
http://hidethedecay.deviantart.com/gallery/31525950

As you mentioned, with the elevator room flipped, the prison areas are directly beneath the back hall and the study/guest room area, so it's impossible to distinguish. I might upload another version with just the essential rooms tonight.

(06-11-2012, 11:08 PM)asciipornstar Wrote: [ -> ]All the maps come from hidethedecay on deviantart. The individual maps are much more useful if you're actually trying to play through the game:
http://hidethedecay.deviantart.com/gallery/31525950

As you mentioned, with the elevator room flipped, the prison areas are directly beneath the back hall and the study/guest room area, so it's impossible to distinguish. I might upload another version with just the essential rooms tonight.

Yeah but I mean because it seems like you have already connected them all, it should just be as simple as hiding the other layer folders (assuming that's how you've got it set up) and then release 3-4 separate maps of the connected areas.