Amnesia - Looking for custom objects

[Racingcreed]

Hey all,

So I'll keep this brief and to the point. I'm currently in my first year at university studying game design. One aspect of what we are learning is creating assets and such in programs like Maya, however it's likely to be a few months before I'm confident enough to create my own assets from scratch to a degree that's of high enough standards to be implemented into a custom story.

As this is the case, I'm curious as to whether there are any existing custom assets out there that have been created for custom stories, but are free to use due to permissions being granted by the creator. To be clear, I'm not looking to claim anything as my own, I'm more than happy to credit the creators. The reason I ask is I that in my spare time, I feel creating an Amnesia custom story will aid my understanding of scripting, level design, game design or so on and so forth, but I wanted to give the story a feel that's... How to put this, a little 'un-Amnesiaish'?

To explain that a little better; most custom stories use the same objects, consist of using keys on doors, running from monsters and la de dah, which is great and all, but it gets a little stale and wanted to try something a little more... experimental.

I've yet to learn how the angel script language works, perhaps I may find someone who would be willing to help me in that regard, however that's a little further down the line, at the moment I'm more focused on building the levels and plotting the story.

If anyone know of any assets I could use, or anyone who I might be able to contact for this purpose, or in fact anything relating to my most at all, please leave a comment below.

All comments and help is greatly appreciated.
Thank you for taking the time to read this also! ^.^

[Romulator]

I don't know if you have ever played White Night, but that is FULL of custom assets, all you need to do when you use them is give credit

[Racingcreed]

Thanks for the response, I have indeed played White Night, a fantastic mod. Whilst I'm glad to hear that I'm able to use these assets, whilst giving permission, I'm looking for more... Amnesia themed assets, nothing too modern.

Any ideas where I might be able to find such content?

[daortir]

In my very casual opinion, assets don't make the originality of the mod.
Simple exemple, take a look at some mods using Penumbra assets. Some of them just build areas that look like Penumbra's with those assets. The CS won't have this original and creative feeling because people will know what to expect from the mapping.

Now consider Through the Portal, and how creative its level design is, using the basic assets. I am thinking about the Alexander's ruins map. This map uses TDD assets only, with the exception of the skybox and background buildings but they are not really important in this map. And yet, the blue atmosphere is competely eerie and unexpected, it is something that is completely new in Amnesia !

I also want to point out this picture.
http://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods...-28-36.png

Everything in this picture was in the original Amnesia, including the lava effect.

I honestly think we are very, very far from having tried everything with TDD assets.

[Racingcreed]

You bring up a good point. My reasons for looking for additional assets was to give me more options and choices to play with in the editor, but perhaps I could toy around with a few ideas here and there.

Do you by chance, know of any other examples that incorporate similar design aspects?

Quite an interesting point. That's given me quite a lot to think about. Thanks for the post. ^,^

[Romulator]

Sometimes it's just the littlest of things which can be very different. Grabbing some of the 2x4's of wood, putting them in a closet, then setting them as static objects gives you a closet with some shelves.

Using some of the smaller objects (eg, the dagger in the kitchen assets), making them into items which can be picked up could probably be later used to cut some rope or pick a lock. Another example would be the mallot, which can be made into a sledgehammer with some size adjustments, and if necessary some edits to the textures.

If you want to explore something on the fear side of things, try to put the player in the most abnormal of situations. Take the Justine prisoner in the first cells (the one on the table) and throw the jar of acid you make in the beginning of ATDD on him in order to extract his fears into a machine, then drop your sanity a fair bit because you killed someone.

[daortir]

First of all I am glad I managed to make you interested !

About the "Through the Portal" style, I can not think of many mods that tried to achieve this. I am trying to create very innovative environments for my Custom Story, maybe you'll find a bit of inspiration there, who knows ^^.

Other mods have been extremely creative with the assets, did you play The Four Horsemen ? Play it at least until the Portal Sequence, because the mansion part is beautiful. I am not sure it has the very original look you are looking for, but holy moly it's very well done. Key to Freedom also has some very creative mapping, and it's also a great mod to play according to the reviews (mine crashed for no reason ;n; ).

Robosprog's mapping is also worth being mentioned, he uses fogareas to create a very special atmosphere in his mod. He made a very creative mansion are in his sins of the father remake, this area is really worth playing, or at least looking at in your editor.

I'd suggest the portal sequence from The four horsemen, the mapping/detailing of Key to Freedom, as well as the mansion map from Sins of the Father.

Good luck : ) !

EDIT : Romulator got a point there as well ! I noticed that adding a small piece of wood to a piano made it able to hold an opened book. That was an original way to make the piano a bit more realistic and original : 3.

[Traggey]

There's an entire forum section about this :3
For usage of the assets outside of Amnesia you'll have to contact the authors individually.

http://www.frictionalgames.com/forum/forum-42.html

[Racingcreed]

Thanks for the comments, there are some interesting ideas in each of them that has provoked me into experimenting with the current in-game assets. I'll definitely check out the custom stories mentioned too, they sound very intriguing indeed.

Might I ask one last question, If I may. Would you recommend me attempting to create a custom story on my own, or is it recommended to create one in collaboration with others?

~I've seen many in which the credits display numerous contributors which leads me to believe that creating one from scratch is either incredibly difficult, or just simply time consuming. Of course I'll need to seek some help from others, such as voice actors and such, but as a general development role which includes scripting, story and level design, what do you guys suggest?

Many thanks for the replies too, they're most helpful to me. ^.^