Frictional Games Forum (read-only)

The ceiling tiling is too small; you might want to try making it larger (change the x and z axis stretch from 1 to 0.5 to make them larger). The room is also very, very large. I'd shrink it by quite a lot (probably down to about 4 walls by 3 walls - the three windows with 2 half-walls on either side). It'll make the room easier to decorate. It's great that you used billboards, but they shouldn't be clipping through the walls or extending past the window's edges. This is how I use billboards:


Aside from billboards, the entire room feels very... mechanical(?). There's no natural change in angle of furniture - only the standard grid-snaps and a few, rare, 45 degree angles. Once you have everything placed roughly where you want, disable grid snapping (by clicking that little red magnet in the bottom left corner of the level editor) and rotate/move a few objects. Your map shouldn't look like a (very horror-esque) doll-house straight from the manufacturer if you want to immerse a player in it; it should look like a conference room/dining room that people have lived in and inhabited.

(05-09-2013, 12:17 AM)Zokrar Wrote: [ -> ]As for the room being quite large, I agree with that. This was my first custom story and there's really no point going back to it now fix that up, but I'll keep what you've said in mind for future works.

If you intend to release the custom story, I would recommend going back and polishing the first few maps so that they remain quality consistent with the rest of your game. Otherwise just keep it in mind for the future.

(05-09-2013, 12:17 AM)Zokrar Wrote: [ -> ]As for your photo, the lighting is very.. 'warm' and ambient, if you get what I'm saying. Did you add a colour tint, maybe?

I don't edit my pictures in photoshop other than to crop them.

(05-09-2013, 12:17 AM)Zokrar Wrote: [ -> ]In my picture it's very dark except for the light directly from the windows and doesn't look too realistic in my opinion. How can I achieve such realistic lighting as you have done? I've tried adding spot lights/point lights around but I've never gotten such a warm feeling from lighting that you achieved in that picture.

I'm glad you asked :D

Well, there are a couple things you can try:
1. Use a boxlight. Pretty self explanitory, just make sure it covers the entire map (you can stretch it by pressing "E" while the light's selected). Spotlights and pointlights are also important for adding interest to a level, but make sure you always have that base boxlight to default on.
2. Make the lights not white. I've noticed that most beginning modders use white lights for absolutely everything - mainly because they don't know how to change the colour of the lights. It's actually really easy:

• Click on the light you want to change the colour of
  
• Select the "General" tab on the right-hand menu (it's the one automatically selected)
  
• Click the white box beside the text "Diffuse color" (at the bottom of the menu)
  
• Type numbers between 0 and 1 into the boxes OR slide the slidey bar things until you get a colour you like
  

*side note*
If I mention a decimal number (ie 0.182), I'm referring to the numbers you would type in to those boxes when you're changing the colour of your light.
A string of three, three-decimal numbers (0.099, 0.091, 0.072) followed by "(RGB)" means I listed the values I used for a light in the order of Red, Green, and Blue
*end side note*

There are a couple general rules I use for lighting up a map, you don't have to stick to them, but at least give them a try:

Use a boxlight in every map. Just one boxlight. And make it your dimmest colour. For boxlights, I don't go higher than 0.15 on any of the values unless I want a really bright room or a really saturated colour, and I don't go any lower than 0.035. Alpha seems pretty useless for boxlights (correct me if I'm wrong about that)so I usually set it to 0.

No light is pure white. Ever. The highest I've gone is 1.000, 0.897, 0.618 (RGB) for a spotlight shining through an open door in mid-day. Lights usually have some colour to them (if not, the shadows - boxlights - do) - even in the middle of the day with no clouds or dust in the air.

Choose a colour you want your main source of light to be, then make one light that's brighter, and 2-4 lights that are darker (depending on how white the original colour was). The darkest is your boxlight's colour (which can be dimmed if necessary) and the lightest is your spotlight's colour (which can be brightened if necessary). Do not make the ratio between R:G:B the same for all of these lights! That's almost as bad as just making the entire room white. If they're all the same colour, it's monochromatic - meaning your shadows look the same as your highlights. Not only is this just not something you would ever see in reality (yellow light, blue shadow), but it's also a little bit boring. Then again, I really enjoy painting and changing the colour of my lights, so that's just me.

Aaaaand one last thing. Warm rooms = warm light source and warm objects. The walls, lighting, floor, heck, even the carpet, in the screenshot I posted all follow the same colour theme. That's not to say you can't have contrasting colours - ATDD's main menu screen is an example of that (with the blue light and the orange torch light). The colours I used for the room (with slight tweaking, possibly) were:

R: 0.150 -> 0.300 -> 0.500 -> 0.750 -> 0.847 -> 1.000
G: 0.035 -> 0.121 -> 0.311 -> 0.569 -> 0.694 -> 0.845
B: 0.074 -> 0.189 -> 0.369 -> 0.449 -> 0.564 -> 0.618

The darkest is a maroon-y (is maroon the right colour description even?) purple and the brightest is more of a creamy yellow colour. That was me playing around with colour theory (this is a link for photography, but it applies to level design as well).

Anyways, best of luck! I look forward to seeing what you make in the future :)

The darkness around the screen edges give a nice effect for a screenshot, not so sure about how it would look playing, though.

I'd direct the camera up higher so that you don't clip off the top of the iron maiden. It only needs a little bit of space above it, but it shouldn't clip out of the image like that.

Rule of Thirds - if you want the body inside the torture closet to be the focus, not his knee cap, tilt the screen view until something interesting is on one of the focal points - perhaps the largest part of the person (torso)?

The overall colour scheme is great!
I'd leave only one of the arms in the iron maiden though; since they're both left hands, it looks a bit awkward.

That's also quite a small amount of blood considering the man was stabbed to death inside a pointy-death-closet. I mean, if there's drains on the floor, there's definitely going to be a lot more blood and, if someone had cleaned up the blood, they probably would have taken the body with them as well.

You might want to consider throwing some decals and particle systems around to create texture and break the patterns in the walls (usually the fog ps and some dirt decals work nicely).

Aand lastly, the light hitting the front of the iron maiden is too white. There's one very, very white light around the face of the thing, and it really destroys the contrast. If you want the same brightness, try making it a warm yellow or orange.

"The world of Madness"

Well, there are a couple things you can try:
1. Use a boxlight. Pretty self explanitory, just make sure it covers the entire map (you can stretch it by pressing "E" while the light's selected). Spotlights and pointlights are also important for adding interest to a level, but make sure you always have that base boxlight to default on.
2. Make the lights not white. I've noticed that most beginning modders use white lights for absolutely everything - mainly because they don't know how to change the colour of the lights. It's actually really easy:
Click on the light you want to change the colour of
Select the "General" tab on the right-hand menu (it's the one automatically selected)
Click the white box beside the text "Diffuse color" (at the bottom of the menu)
Type numbers between 0 and 1 into the boxes OR slide the slidey bar things until you get a colour you like

*side note*
If I mention a decimal number (ie 0.182), I'm referring to the numbers you would type in to those boxes when you're changing the colour of your light.
A string of three, three-decimal numbers (0.099, 0.091, 0.072) followed by "(RGB)" means I listed the values I used for a light in the order of Red, Green, and Blue
*end side note*

There are a couple general rules I use for lighting up a map, you don't have to stick to them, but at least give them a try:

Use a boxlight in every map. Just one boxlight. And make it your dimmest colour. For boxlights, I don't go higher than 0.15 on any of the values unless I want a really bright room or a really saturated colour, and I don't go any lower than 0.035. Alpha seems pretty useless for boxlights (correct me if I'm wrong about that)so I usually set it to 0.

No light is pure white. Ever. The highest I've gone is 1.000, 0.897, 0.618 (RGB) for a spotlight shining through an open door in mid-day. Lights usually have some colour to them (if not, the shadows - boxlights - do) - even in the middle of the day with no clouds or dust in the air.

Choose a colour you want your main source of light to be, then make one light that's brighter, and 2-4 lights that are darker (depending on how white the original colour was). The darkest is your boxlight's colour (which can be dimmed if necessary) and the lightest is your spotlight's colour (which can be brightened if necessary). Do not make the ratio between R:G:B the same for all of these lights! That's almost as bad as just making the entire room white. If they're all the same colour, it's monochromatic - meaning your shadows look the same as your highlights. Not only is this just not something you would ever see in reality (yellow light, blue shadow), but it's also a little bit boring. Then again, I really enjoy painting and changing the colour of my lights, so that's just me.

Aaaaand one last thing. Warm rooms = warm light source and warm objects. The walls, lighting, floor, heck, even the carpet, in the screenshot I posted all follow the same colour theme. That's not to say you can't have contrasting colours - ATDD's main menu screen is an example of that (with the blue light and the orange torch light). The colours I used for the room (with slight tweaking, possibly) were:

R: 0.150 -> 0.300 -> 0.500 -> 0.750 -> 0.847 -> 1.000
G: 0.035 -> 0.121 -> 0.311 -> 0.569 -> 0.694 -> 0.845
B: 0.074 -> 0.189 -> 0.369 -> 0.449 -> 0.564 -> 0.618

The darkest is a maroon-y (is maroon the right colour description even?) purple and the brightest is more of a creamy yellow colour. That was me playing around with colour theory (this is a link for photography, but it applies to level design as well)