Tenebris Lake Full Conversion

[darkadders]

- Your story made no sense whatsoever!

Hahahahaha. Wow.

it didnt.. im sorry, but it really didnt..

[Wetterhound]

Maybe, one more thing I could think of as far as critique goes would be the grammar of notes and subtitles. I often saw uncapitalized "i"s and missing apostraphes in contractions. It's no big deal, really, but perhaps proofread everything a bit more if you make an update to the game. It would make it all look more professional. :3

[devin413]

allrdy done ^^ will be out with the next patch.

[SUMMER^]

Maybe, one more thing I could think of as far as critique goes would be the grammar of notes and subtitles. I often saw uncapitalized "i"s and missing apostraphes in contractions. It's no big deal, really, but perhaps proofread everything a bit more if you make an update to the game. It would make it all look more professional. :3

Yeah, that was done already when the mod was released, but got accidentally left out.


Also, to the guy quoting my laughter, I was more laughing because of who was saying the story didn't make sense rather than not agreeing with the statement, since that guy is responsible for one of the most nonsensical CS ever created (but don't get me wrong, it is also one of the most enjoyable)

Anyways, the story does make sense, it's just not executed quite as it should be in the mod, but it's being worked on. Adding mementos of the player's thoughts about what just occurred and stuff like that should help a bit.

[Danny Boy]

Maybe, one more thing I could think of as far as critique goes would be the grammar of notes and subtitles. I often saw uncapitalized "i"s and missing apostraphes in contractions. It's no big deal, really, but perhaps proofread everything a bit more if you make an update to the game. It would make it all look more professional. :3

Yeah, that was done already when the mod was released, but got accidentally left out.


Also, to the guy quoting my laughter, I was more laughing because of who was saying the story didn't make sense rather than not agreeing with the statement, since that guy is responsible for one of the most nonsensical CS ever created (but don't get me wrong, it is also one of the most enjoyable)

Anyways, the story does make sense, it's just not executed quite as it should be in the mod, but it's being worked on. Adding mementos of the player's thoughts about what just occurred and stuff like that should help a bit.

I know I sounded a bit hypocritical... but the thing is that my own story was not supposed to make any sense! it was just a random summer joke that and my cousin and I had wend it was late and our brains weren't functioning as they were supposed to... but Tenebris lake is not the case! as far as i could tell it was supposed to make some sense.... but the thing is that it is hard as fuck to make some sense out of everything that has been happening on the story >.<

don't get me wrong! I did enjoy myself... wend I wasn't lost on the ridiculously and extremely confusing dark "mazes". not to mention the quests.... oh god Walktroughs SAVE ME!!!

[RawkBandMan]

aww thx
hope it will work

Well, it's apparent your story just hates me.

Even putting it into custom story formed resulted in the same Black Box error! I seriously feel like kicking someone in the face right now.
I'm out of ideas, so I may as well just wait for some sort of update or patch on this story and try again. Thanks anyway.

[Zipi]

Spoiler below!

what happened to the prison keep?
why the hell would a mother abandon her children and randomly take off to live in France for the rest of her life?

Because she fucking felt like it.


whats up with the monsters? i don't understand who they are, what they are, why they are and how they came to be the way they are!

Did you pay any attention at all to the flashbacks? They're slaves, puppets, dolls.


to be honest, its a little unfair to do this to you guys. you did put a good amount of work into this custom story/full conversion; but QUANTITY =/= QUALITY

Quality > quantity.

examples of this:

1. i could see clipping issues every 20 seconds or so.


WHAT? I'm sorry, it's just that I spent about 10 hours scouring the map for the most obvious clipping/flickering issues and having them removed. Do you think YOU could document the problems you experienced, rather than just writing this negative report?


2. the amount of maps and the little amount of story made me think that you guys didn't really head for the "story based custom story/full conversion". this is a big issue. the story made me go "what the flying f***?" at the end, and to be honest, it wasn't really thought through very well.




why are there monsters in the first place?
why are there miners randomly out to kill me when they see me?
why would anyone not leave this castle when he saw the things he saw? according to this story the guy didnt even know he had a family, so why the hell would he continue into this godforsaken empty weird unorganized castle?

According to the story, the guy knew he had a past last that he had forgotten, and wants to find more of it. He knows a part of his memory has been wiped away, and he wants to find out why.


overall:

bad:


- the story made little or no sense.

- the environment and events were very very very badly explained.. if ever explained at all.

- the mapping could have been a lot better. like i said, quantity =/= quality. i found myself stuck in it numerous times.

- the monsters and custom content could have been made better. (the weight painting on the monsters were horribly done, i must say. no offense. the skin underneath their arms followed its hand when it struck, and overall the animations were done poorly. on the slender man statue, the chains also moved along with the skin. it really broke the immersion..)

- i was LITERALLY lost for 3 hours wondering what the f*** i was supposed to do. half the time i spent just wandering about, waiting for SOME SORT of hint as for what to do; though i NEVER received a single one..

- the lighting job on the maps were poor. I could literally not see anything when playing through the first maps.. a box light or two on 0.2 on its settings, all over each map would've helped greatly.

- there were misplaced particle systems everywhere.

- i always felt like i was missing something of the story every time i was forced to continue without me wanting to.

- realism was really absent here. you guys really couldve done that bit better. i really don't see how random enemies can come out of nowhere, and just poof..

You're complaining about realism here? I think I should direct you towards The Small Horse, or perhaps House of Creep?


"but the guy is crazy!" yeah, i get it. but im crazier than most people i know, and I really don't think im gonna see random poofing monsters any time soon. and by the way, how the hell can a guy get a seizure entering a black section, when in this story im not supposed to fear the dark.

- the voice acting on the flashbacks were so abstract and weird.. i literally couldn't understand what they were saying half the time i was listening (except for traggey's loud voice (thank heavens)). they were so mute.. so quiet.. *sigh*


That's why there are subtitles.


- i never really understood the point of this goo in the story.. there was no explanation of it, nor was there any hints and pointers on what its purpose really was (other than annoyingly blocking your way, and sometimes glitching you into the game without any other way out than to exit, and re enter the conversion...)
my guesses would be to try to at least make a scare factor, but it really didn't function...

- how come the story is named "tenebris lake", though you only spend about 2 minutes in it overall?..

i could go on for hours ranting about this, but im sure you see my point..

I'm sure you could....

good:

- importing animations into the game, and actually making them function is something i still struggle with. its nice to see that you guys managed to do this, and at least tried to make this as unique as possible.

- the mapping had its basic principles alright. you did pull of the part of tenebris lake really well.

- there were some creative parts in there that i absolutely loved, and the way you used the amnesia items was well done.

Not worth any more of my time.

I'm sorry Summer but stop acting like such a spoilt brat. You want to work in the community for bug testing and such learn to accept criticism just like your clients do. Also if you WATCHED crys play through you missed a few clipping textures..

[devin413]

aww thx
hope it will work

Well, it's apparent your story just hates me.

Even putting it into custom story formed resulted in the same Black Box error! I seriously feel like kicking someone in the face right now.
I'm out of ideas, so I may as well just wait for some sort of update or patch on this story and try again. Thanks anyway.

ohh okk lol then i dont know whats the problem there is somethink rly rly wrong with that.

[Hunter of Shadows]

Here's my thoughts and feelings on Tenebris after finishing playing it

A lot of what this CS does is really cool, the way saves are done, a lot of the music is good, and it starts building an interesting atmosphere...up until I discovered that the plot is fairly nonsensical, and I stopped trying to make sense of it half way through.

Many of the models are quite good, if a large percentage of them being pointless for enemies, you have SO many different enemies, that to be frank the overall effect of the enemies is kind of washed out, especially since...so many of the enemies don't make sense

I mean, some of them do, like the miner enemy, but some of them just seem to be there for the sake of having a new monster, and while a new enemy is still cool, the effect is washed out by the fact that they just come off as thrown in.

Not in terms of how scary they are, the scares in this story are quite excellent and had me reaching for my brown pants numerous times, as compared to so many custom stories that think jump scares are scary.

Levels are all quite aesthetically pleasing, but the design of them caused me to want to quit the whole story then and there, I got lost so many times I got pretty irritated with the whole damn thing, most of the puzzles are good...other then the few nonsensical ones(like the one that required 'lubricant', which immediately made me think of condoms and anal sex and stuff...seriously, just try and think of that puzzle and the 'dry lubricant' without snickering), and most prominently...THE ROCK DEPENDS


The story itself is bloody awful, with so many plot holes, logic gaps, confusing narrative and more that it made me honestly wonder if any serious effort was put into it, the story was so inane that I more or less stopped caring about the main character, anyone he knew, or the story in general, because none of it made sense or gave me a reason to give a damn.

One of the best examples of the horrid story, would be the Shadow chase at Chapter 7: The Choice...I mean seriously wtf was all I could think, why the hell is there a Shadow? I know it's probably not technically 'the Shadow' but still for christ sakes where did this thing come from and why the hell is it attacking me in this custom story, I'm NOT Daniel


Much of the voice acting is...either good, average or just plain awful, and it's sad to say that the good voice acting comes in to play when the lines being spoken aren't intended to have emotion in them, the awful voice acting is...the best example comes from once again at the end, when you run into your wife and kids, and she begs you to rescue her and your children.

Except there is very little emotion in her voice, she sounds as if she's talking about it being a cloudy day and how that much ruin things for her from the way her tone implies, which leads to some definite dissonance considering the situation she's in.

Overall, I think this custom story could have been utterly amazing, it was still fun, and that's a lot more then can be said for a lot of custom stories out there(*cough* jump scare riddled pewdiepie cs's come to mind*cough*, but it was not a blast to play, like Followed by Death, White Night or Through the Portal, all of which have cohesive narrative, intelligent story, excellent scares, good level design, and more.

If I would make suggestions to improve this...

1. Don't have so many monsters! Having so many different enemies severely hurts the ability of the game to draw you into the experience in my opinion, because the reason ATDD's original monster's are so memorable and scary is because there was only two of them(not counting lurker), because you only met those two, I'm trying to figure out how to word this...

Because there was only two, there wasn't the problem this story had, where there were so many different monsters that none of them stuck out to me, they all sort of washed out the overall experience because half the time I wasn't even sure which monster was after me.

Or at the least if you do make a lot of monsters, make sure each one is memorable for your players, that they vividly remember encountering each one...and shivering in fear to response to the memory, instead of 'what the fuck was that thing?'

2. Make your levels less confusing! I got lost so many times, in your custom story, and that's not fun, that's just plain out frustrating, make your level design more simplistic, admittedly I don't feel this is necessary your fault, I frequently got the impression you were attempting to go for the pitch black, maze like feel similar to ATDD's Prison level's, where it's easy to get lost if you don't pay attention, but can be navigated with success so long as you make a mental map as you go.

Of course some people might not feel this is necessary, Silent Hill 2 is extremely easy to get lost in, but that doesn't make it bad at all, I'm just stating my opinions though.

3. Your story needs some work mate, really bad, I'm not talking the typo's or anything else, that's forgivable, I'm talking about how so little of the story had any narrative coherence, the story simply did not fit well together and many things were utterly confusing or just plain didn't explain what was going on, for example many of the flash backs in the early game didn't explain jack, and while admittedly not all flashbacks have to reveal anything of the plot, to have nothing relevant in all of them is just plain silly.

Overall I rate this custom story 6/10, which is quite good

[devin413]

THE ROCK DEPENDS xD i was just translate it and google said this to me and i was just thinking hmm ok why not xD.
thx for you positive and negative criticism.

there will be an update that fixes some stuff i worked until 1o clock in the morning to give it to you guys as fast as whe can.