The Guest - Custom story

[Khyrpa]

I'd like to also point a few things out.

More about the box light thing. It's not that a box light is necessary, but when you have a place so dark that you cant see anything in the dark corners without night vision. And using the night vision purposefully to see is just stupid gameplay. You don't want the player to search pixels around the room by crouching and waiting at every black spot. So test your maps and make sure they are player friendly with enough light to see around, especially if you don't give the player a lantern. So just reinforce the spot lights that come from windows with large darker point lights (light does scatter around when hitting something). Box light can give the whole area a slight tint of a dominant light color (for good example values check TDD maps).

Another thing that bugged me is the fact that you disabled jump. That took one obvious solution for the ladder puzzle away; stacking boxes. Which is most likely what most would have done at that point. The more solutions to a puzzle, the better usually.

Obliv:
"Common lighting error. Light doesn't shine through windows in all directions".
I disagree! If it looks good its fine. And when you really start to think about it, light can come like that from windows. Might just want to make them brighter at some places. (also its more dramatic, example: pretty much any TDD map)
But what bothered me more is the fact that your sky is pretty dark green/brown and there is light coming into the mansion through the see-through windows with bright white light. Where does the light come from? People won't notice such things, but now you will hopefully be bothered with it and fix it :)

Kman:
"Another rather big thing was there was no skybox, this is another vital
element to custom story creation if you're gonna have any scenes where
the player goes outside or even looks outside, as a black sky just looks
bland and unrealistic"
maps/main/ch01/03_archives.map
And I suggest keeping almost constant check on how TDD did their maps, it just helps.

Kman:
" And while I'm on the topic of lights, you should have more pre-lit
ones. I noticed almost all the light in each of the rooms was coming
from windows, while this can look good you should always try to have a
few lit up candles".
What? Why? If you want to have a cold/abandoned feeling, better not use warm colored lighting. And then some might wonder who lit those candles...

I see "build first, then think about gameplay/story" mentality here. You had good atmosphere for the place, but it lacked in other departments. Keep on making stories!

Spoiler below!

"necessity to find a bunch of keys on each level"
making the player search for a bottle from a rather large area is not that much different.
AddTimer("damn_you_developer", 5, "mission_completed");
that saves you from hate though :u