Subterranea (Work in Progress - NEED FEEDBACK)

[Silverwave]

The best custom story to date!

You may want to watch the Church level. If you go around some of the pillars, the textures are sometime badly aligned and it creates glitches. Also, if you go near the altar, you can see reddish light coming from underground at the bottom of the south wall.

Also, maybe adding some puzzles? Maybe there's some later but the first 15 minutes (or so) I've played, I was just mostly exploring and didn't found any puzzles.

Keep up the good work!!

NOTE : I would also like to have a little intro where you wall down the ghost town and find the abbandoned church! You don't need to make other buildings "entry-able" (I know, that's not a word lol), just the church. I would set a hell of a nice mood!

[Penguinmaster]

Ok, so I downloaded this last night, played through it, composed my thoughts and here's some feedback. I'd like to start by saying I'm not trying to be mean, I'm just telling you what needs to be done to improve this and I'd expect you and anyone else to be just as blunt as honest to anything I post.

Story
Ok, so it starts off saying that the player is a spelunker and came across an old abandoned city, rummaged an old shop and searched the church for signs of why people left. Ok introduction, I liked the presentation with the text on the dark screen, set it up well. Few problems though. The back story of the player being a spelunker is either unnecessary or inconsistent. With the character being a spelunker, I assumed that the town was underground, but that can't be true since there was light coming in from the church windows, so since there was light, it's above ground rendering the spelunker occupation nul. If it's above ground then the player should be a hunter or hiker, something a little more relevant. Also, if the player was a spelunker who found a town, then I'd assume you were currently exploring, but anyone going to explore caves would have a light source and would not need to find a lantern and would instead use their flashlight they already had with them.

Lighting
While the general lighting was ok, there were a few glaring problems. Firstly, I'm going to go back to the light from the church windows. Once again, if it's underground there shouldn't be any light there in the first place, and also, if it is above ground, there should only be light coming from one direction. There is one sun, giving off one general direction of light. All the lights from all the windows lead inward, indicating multiple light sources. Something needs to change about that. Secondly, the lights in the hallway. the lighting goes from well lit to pitch black instantly and it really just looks bad. You need to add a bit of ambient lighting to fix that. Also with the torches in the hallway, it's too symmetrical. These are torches fixed into carved rock. You need to offset each torch horizontally AND vertically to remove the mechanical 'perfect' feel of the build. I would also recommend rotating the torches a bit to conform with the direction of the rock wall it's attached to.

Prop placement
Okay, the starting church area was great, I'll give you that, but the quality isn't as good later on. Back to the hallway (yes I have many problems with this damn hallway don't I?) I already mentioned the torches so no need to reiterate, but my comment is now on the tablets hung on either side of the walls. First of all, there are too many. Since it's noticeably the same model, the strange creepy feeling meant to be given off it taken away. Seeing one or two strange tablets is creepy, seeing a bunch of the exact same thing in the same area is weak and has next to no effect. Ok, now to the final map, the living quarters, I could write a whole essay about this area, but I'll be short (too late). I'll talk about my three biggest problems. First, the beds. The beds are all constrained to the exact same grid piece, are all facing the same way, and are bland. This is meant to be an old abandoned place where people used to live. Displace and rotate the beds somewhat and it'll give a much needed boost of realism. Never in life with you see a bunch of beds perfectly lined up. Secondly, the barrel room. Oi, I don't like this room. 1. Why are the barrels scattered? Ever seen a storeroom? Whether it's boxes or barrels, you will never EVER see the containers carelessly placed around. They will be neatly placed together for easy inventory and access. 2. Why are the barrels on both sides of the room? I understand you don't want a big empty chunk or room wasted, but it looks odd. You have a bunch of identical barrels stored on two sides of one room. You need to put it all on one side or change up the barrels on one side, scale them or change the model. 3. Why is the note in the exact middle of the room? Now this is my biggest problem. The note is in the center, facing the door... This is a note was lost or dropped here, so why is it so precise? You need to change this, and once again, it just simple displacement and rotation and it'll be better. Onto my third and final problem with this map, the bottles. I want to slap you for this one, not even joking. If my best friend made this mistake I would slap them too. You have the bottles arranged dark green, light green, two dark greens and then two light greens. It's like the on each shelf. Each bottle is the same distance away from the others on every shelf, they're all the EXACT same distance from the edge and I'm sorry, but that is shit. I can't be anything but mean here when I say that is just terrible. NEVER! EVER! Do this again! since it's only a 10 second process of displacing and reordering the bottles, there is no reason what so ever for this crap to ever happen. If you do nothing else, take a single minute from your life and fix that.

Okay! That's the end of my extremely long rant, I bet by now you hate me and other readers do too, so let me end off with this. I'm not trying to be mean, excluding the part about the bottles of course, I'm just trying to help. I can tell you put a lot of effort into this and by now means should you stop, you my good sir, have potential, and if you were to just spend a little more time onto details like that, this could easily end up one of the best custom stories here. Good luck with the rest of your levels.

[Soon]

The reason everything looks so "perfectly" put together in almost all the areas is because it is a WIP. I havn't yet had the time to go through and max everything look pretty. I put the notes directly in plain view so people could find them easily. Everything will be moved around if I ever get around to updating more of it. If I spent all that time making everything look pretty before I tested it, I could potentially waste hours of time just to find out it won't work. That being said, I appreciate your feedback but everything you said I already knew about with the exception of the church lighting. You're right that the light would only be coming through one side.

As for the introduction. Yes, the character is a rock climber AND spelunker. I didn't choose this profession to make you assume that you're instantly underground. I did it to give the impression that maybe he was on his way to a rocky cliffside and happened upon the town. Apparently you didn't read most of the intro because I also mention how he's losing daylight and finding bits of wood.

[Mekose]

I have to be in agreement with Penguinmaster. This custom story is getting way too much praise for a work in progress. Soon, if it was that early on in development that you couldn't add fine details, then don't even release it or add props. The area is populated with beds, chairs, bottles, and other knick-knacks that are unnecessary for testing. This is seems meant more of a tour. It's very unfinished and I'll never understand people who release something so early. Though, as the program is newly released I can accept some people throwing something together to say "hey look, this works". In the future, remember that the smallest detail can completely break immersion which is what holds this game together. It takes a ton of work to build immersion and 5 seconds to break it, it is very delicate. Especially to people with a watchful eye, like Penguin and myself. Also, for the character to be on his way to a rocky cliff-side, that means he had to previously KNOW about the rocky cliff-side, why didn't anyone else stumble upon this town? Besides, what kind of skills does a rock-climbing/spelunker have that will impact game play at all, this is just trifle that seems out of place and very pointless.

In closing, this wasn't completely awful for a work in progress. Penguin is right when he said you have potential, and trust me I'm no good at this either. But, you did ask specifically for feedback and that's what your getting. Saying it's bad because it's a WIP is a cheesy excuse that makes you look immature. In response to feedback, always thank the person for taking their time to give you their thoughts. If you want yourself to seem professional and skilled, take all of the feedback in stride. The customer is always right. Never deny feedback.

[Silverwave]

I'd also like to add something to the last two comments.

I'm a book editor and one thing you have to teach to the authors is everytime someone (anyone) think something isn't clear, out of place or somehow bad, it probably is. The author doesn't have an exterior look of his work and something he thought was ok could be a flaw for the others.

So, when someone tells you he thinks that knowing the character being a spelunker seems irrevelant/out of place or feels somehow wrong, you should at least take that into consideration and ask yourself if you think that info is necessary or if you can't think of something better. After carefull thinking, if you still believe it's relevant and good, then keep it, it's your work after all!

Like Mekose said, "never deny feedback".

Keep the good work!

[Soon]

I never denied anyone's feedback. I just explained why things were the way they were.

[Mekose]

I never denied anyone's feedback. I just explained why things were the way they were.

You just denied feedback by saying you didn't deny feedback. . . *head explodes*

Thanks for the back up Silverware, you raise a damn good point with the exterior perspective.

[mikedrum1]

Good mod so far

However in the room on your left at the end of the living area just before the blocked door, there is a wardrobe you can open and sounds are still coming from it.

Also I have no idea what to do in the living area, I found a surgical needle and have no idea what to do next. I search high and low in the living area but couldn't find anything else.

[Lyssa]

-snip-

That was not constructive critism. You may have raised valid points, sure, but all the talk about 'slapping him' and stuff is completely unecesary. If you want to good at critiquing things and giving decent feedback you should curb that, buddy.

Also bear in mind that the custom stories you find here are not designed to be scrutinized down to the last little detail. These issues you raise are unlikely to bother a normal player. We're not all playing it just to find stuff wrong with it.

A solid start, OP! Keep at it, I cant wait to see where this ends up.

[Insensitive]

I WANT MORE MAPS MADE BY YOU. YOU ARE AWESOME. Loved it.