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Suggestions and Subjective Guidelines for Custom Story Level Design - PathOS - 10-13-2015 The idea I wanted to try with this thread is to sort of discuss/debate some Level/World Design practices which could help make SOMA Custom Stories more rewarding. Preface that everything of course when it comes to design is subjective and people shouldn't be dissuaded from building what they want. My hope is that this can be where "positive feedback" can be discussed in terms of coming up with suggestions and understandings of what kind of Level Design would be most engaging for players. I in no way claim to be an "Expert" other than my decades of gaming and just recently binging on Amnesia Custom Stories in addition to SOMA. I will certainly defer to posters who've had actual mod and HPL Engine experience when it comes to things.
So, that's what I've got to start with, please feel free to add your own ideas and suggestions or to take issue with what I've already said, or add to them RE: Suggestions and Subjective Guidelines for Custom Story Level Design - PathOS - 10-13-2015 Thanks! Please do feel free to address any points though. I've seen your posts in several of the CS threads in helping to educate those who are testing the Editor, either in terms of level design tips or especially when it comes to prop and lighting placement. It is certainly great to hear that you're going to do a tutorial! That will be absolutely helpful for sure, because it is clear from just a cursory glance that HPL3 will be less "pick up and play" to Edit than the previous version was, for better or worse. RE: Suggestions and Subjective Guidelines for Custom Story Level Design - Radiance - 10-13-2015 To add up, I'm trying to set up an combat type for Amnesia and SOMA. It must follow some rules
A type of gameplay when player feels he plays a chess game with the monsters in that particular level. What I've could thought so far is some kind of environmental hazard technique in which you use the acctual level environment to your advantage. So, this would directly affect the level design what PathOS and Robosprog talked that every level must have it's own functionality. Player should pay attention to his/her (I don't know if any of women population is lurking on this forum) surroundings and temporarily or permanently entrap an opponent. Second, for Amnesia there could be some magic/fantasy oriented mechanics and for SOMA steampunk/cyberpunk theme with the heavy usage of particle and physics system. Also, it would be great to think defense gameplay system which we haven't seen yet in history of gaming. RE: Suggestions and Subjective Guidelines for Custom Story Level Design - PathOS - 10-13-2015 Level Design and Gameplay are of course inexorably linked together no matter what. The trick is to try and not make things too obvious to the player. I think we can all recognize the games which we played where we could instantly tell as soon as we came to a new area, that "oh, there's going to be a lot of enemies/monsters appearing here", due to the layout and props placed around (this has been so obvious in AAA games like Mass Effect and other over-the-shoulder shooters, or Adventures like Uncharted), and the trick is to be less obvious about that. I think in SOMA, Omicron was the most successful area keeping me tense and so sure that something was going to jump out at any moment. That world design was structured and presented in such a way to keep the atmosphere super oppressive and scary, with all the dead bodies littered everywhere, the fact that the place was in Quarantine, and "lifting the Quarantine" made you wonder if you were going to set free what was under guard? It all depends what you're trying to accomplish. If your goal is to focus on enemy encounters solely then you may be more inclined not to put too much care into such considerations. |