A Story of Death

[Oddity007]

This is a really easy custom story, takes me about 8 minutes to play, and nothing scary happens. I made this because it's been a while since I've done level design, and I thought I'd try it again to relieve some stress and see how well I do.

Link (1.3 MB)

Updated: Link 1.1 (1.3 MB)

Some screenshots:

[Rapture]

Well the first couple maps had a interesting design level. Nothing much else other than poking and laughing at the zombies.

[Kurton]

Spoiler below!

But did you recognize at all the room in which you ended up? ;)

[RawkBandMan]

Dude. Those pictures are pretty

[Dark Knight]

stuck.


what to do in area with ladder?

[Oddity007]

Just because there's something there doesn't mean you need to do anything with it A lot of the stuff in those maps are there just to show the 'history' of the area. Look around a bit more.

Spoiler below!

Try the tunnel near where the candle was, move the wooden beams out of the way.

[Dark Knight]

Oddity007
OK then thanks for tip,
but

Spoiler below!

when i reach that area with stones, i can jump over the wall, and here catch a BUG

(btw, third screen)
any Ideas?

and why no music?

[Oddity007]

I'm not too enthusiastic about using music in games except for key moments. Music plays at the beginning, at where the grunts are, and at the end, those are the only places that I felt that I needed the player to feel a certain way. The rest is up to the player themselves.

Now, as far as ambient sounds, it seems that something in Amnesia's editor for OSX is broken. My only option would be to use scripts, but I'd rather not.

[Ultra Lulz]

Well, I played through this, but unfortunatly I was cut short due to a bug in your story, which I'll explain in this spoiler

Spoiler below!

The part with all the grunts in the cages, the room next to it in the small cabinet, I tried to get the key and the note but when I opened the drawer they both fell through the map.

Though, let me give you some constructive criticism in this; I'll post the downs & boosts to your custom story.

Boosts;

- I enjoyed the dark vibe this story gave off. The foggy areas, and the dark areas.

- I enjoy the fact that you only have music at key points because without the music, your whole imagination is at work; their is no music to tell you if you're safe or not i.e ambient music / creepy music.

- I liked the scares. For example;

Spoiler below!

When the grunts in the cages escape and chase you then disappear. Made me jump and gasp xD

Now the downs;

- Their are a tonne of bugs. Such as the one I said in the first spoiler; it rather disappointed me. Their are also some parts of the map where you can get on top of when you're not supposed too and get out of the map itself.

- This one is picky; I dislike that some doors and areas are unnamed. Like the nameless keys, ect ect.

- The story was hard to understand. I really didn't see much of a story, or that's just me being blind to the story & just going through the scares.


Other than these; I'd say the boosts outweigh the downs. I enjoyed the eerie feeling your story gave off. Keep up the good work :D

[Oddity007]

Interestingly, I haven't seen that bug. I've played it quite a bit from start to finish, and so has Kurton, and the only bug I know that remains is being able to escape the map in the outside portion (and for the 2nd map, if you try really hard). I had wanted to fix it, but I couldn't find a nonrenderable collidable mesh to block it off with, and adding something that was renderable would ruin part of the look. Also, I had wanted to do these maps without creating any new assets or complicated scripting (I do enough of that with my own games *sigh* ). As far as the falling-through bug, I'll try see if I can reproduce it.

I can understand the annoyance with the keys/doors not being named, part of that was probably laziness, as I figured there being only one key/unlockable door at a time would make it unnecessary, but I understand it can help give a cue of what to do.

I dislike making a story obvious when all I have are maps with no people and no scripted events. Telling a story through notes/letters wouldn't have made sense in this custom story due to the whole area being quarantined for infection, the earthquake, blah blah blah... Telling it through research notes wouldn't have made sense either, as one of the papers left behind explains that they left for the north with the research material, and few scientists are that careless. What I was left with was to tell the story through the conditions of the environment, with two noncritical notes left behind. I aimed for a slight vagueness as well, so that people can come away with whatever interpretation they feel more comfortable with.

Edit:
Any bugs you find, let me know, I wouldn't be surprised if I missed a few considering that I'll usually play it the way it was 'intended'.