It has been enough time to little bit chit chat about stuff what I learned myself.
First of all let’s look into our beta. Our beta had 161 (1.2) + 287(1.31) downloads. That is together 448 downloads, what isn’t bad for my first custom story. Even thought we had this many downloads, we got pretty minimum amount of feedback. Most of the feedback was praising such as “Very good CS” or maybe “Best CS I have played so far” or “Really really good!” and so on. That means 2 things. First is that it was really good or opposite, it was so bad that they didn’t want to hurt our feelings
. But let me be little bit ego and look positive way.
Nether the less, I did get some critism too. Maybe someone was too heavy, but I did study a lot from them. The main thing what I noticed first is that pre-release is now crucial thing. Meaning that pick 10 people who are following us and giving them final release maybe 1 week before full release in return of full feedback.
You may think why? It is true – as developer I know how things go and I try to fix as many things as possible and make it so that even fool can pass it in the end. But players can really outrun me without even trying (any offence wasn’t intended obviously). You see, player has no idea what is happening or what he has to do, meaning that player might do some developer unintended actions, or something what developer really didn’t want to happen. Player is dude who doesn’t know what to do, meaning he can do (as Louis said) EV-RY-THING!!!! (Anything fits more tho) That means when I watched let’s plays (as few we had <3), I noticed sooo many bugs what player probably didn’t notice what made me facepalm at myself and at player. For that we need players who will play it throught to see if he jumps into any kind of unexpected and unintended bug. Developing more professional bug free as possible is hard, because there isn’t such a thing called bug freeJ. Players are geniuses; they can manage always to do something, what might be least unexpected to you
.
Let’s go to the next stage. I studied about events a lot. Thanks goes to players, feedback and other people who made CS-s what I played through. You see, we all have different opinions, but in my opinion (too) many custom stories have one of these problems:
1) Too many monsters jumping out from every corner what will drive player nuts and that is not meant as scary way nuts.
2) Really really reallllllllllllllllly bad momentum of monster jumping out. I would say most of the players guessed that monster is coming from that corner or from that room
3) Bugged pathfinding – not really scary.
This are MAIN things what I have noticed and from even sometimes stories what I really enjoyed are very good custom stories. What I studied from my personal experience is something different.
Imagine, you are in some kind of creepy place. You move around. You know, you think that monster will come when you open door, when you will pick up item and all that. That will put player ready to react when player comes, meaning he is partly ready for it. But nothing happens. What is truly spooky is that feeling what player has. “Something happens in moment or two. Monster gonna appear any moment and scare shit out of me! Sadly, many custom stories fail to do that and they do appear when it is most expected. What you need really is to create creative unexpected!
Most creative scare what I have seen was one custom story what Cry played. When people usually open closet, some kind of effect happens instantly, meaning player is always ready for something to happen. What happened there was that locker was closed. Cry was “Oh okay,” and left his attention span down from closet. What really happened was timer. And little bit later cupboard opened and dead man appeared. Even I screamed for sec when I watched video, including cry freaked out for second.
That leads into next point – to create quality story isn’t putting monster every corner. It is to put it places where player least expects and will really freak out. Basically, you can start from this. You pick up random item (key for example) and nothing happens. In reality timer starts what actives some kind of effect after like 5 seconds. Maybe monster comes. That means, there is many possible thing what can happen. Maybe player is still in room and hides. What if player is already in hallway and now he is almost next to monster? Reaction will be different and outcome can be truly spooky and scary. Of course it can end up traditional monster appear, but at least you take risks at some players.
Final thing what I think is most scary and what many custom stories actually don’t use, is infinity loop guarding.
Imagine – yourself in spooky place. Corridors are narrows and there is door on one room where u needs to go. There are thought 1 or 2 monsters patrolling. So what makes it scary is that you don’t want to get busted. You try to sneak and when monster is near, it makes your heart beating faster. And even creator cant script where they meet or HOW they meet. And imagine that when you go pass the door u feel safe in new area, but in reality timer started and after few seconds they start chasing you. It is up to their luck where the monsters are. That means it is up to player speed and acting.
Ok, enough of the monsters. I also studied that making puzzles is hard, what everyone is happy about. So I need to take things more easy and more into story. I must make more like puzzles of events and map exploration.
We also decided on some things what we gonna do – but I won’t tell you that
.
Else I want to thank all those who played it through and left comment, even if it is was just inspiring “I am really looking forward to it!” – with motivation, we will work harder!
Elven
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