I saw Cryaotic's playthrough of your custom story and I liked a lot of what I saw .
Spoiler below!
A lot of it was tightly controlled events that you couldn't avoid which did cause some tension, like having the player look at something scary, but to be honest, the disappearing bodies was kind of....lame :S I suggest in the future making a lot of those types of things ambient (make them happen randomly and not directly in response to an event like entering a room or picking up an item), and not something the player is guaranteed to see. I think it would be much more unsettling to see it happen out of the corner of your eye instead of forcing the player's view to it and forcing them to watch it. Then it just seems weird.
Anyways...watch movies, play other video games, look for inspiration in literature, etc. My advice is to give the player an EMOTION or a feeling, not a jump of fright. Jump scares aren't very scary anymore. They'll give you a little shock but after that there isn't much value to them. They serve there purpose well in many situations, like the climax to a certain sequence, but if you've seen Cryaotic's playthroughs of Amnesia custom stories, you'll notice how over his Amnesia custom story career he stops being scared by the typical jump scares. Sure, they make him yelp every now and then, but it's not like he becomes deathly terrified afterwards.
Examples of good scares? (SPOILERS OF THE DARK DESCENT BELOW)
Spoiler below!
In the Morgue, when the player enters the side rooms with decayed remains of prisoners. The whole sickening/disturbed feeling the player gets. Try and build this up with your work
Spoiler below!
The archives cellar, when the player must hop around on boxes to avoid a watery demise. The panic and stress of having to do a difficult task while death awaits your first (and last) mistake.
Spoiler below!
The maze after the archives cellar, where the player has to run from the water lurker while leaping boxes and running through doors. Build up the fear and panicked feelings during the chase with sounds, etc.
*SUPER SPOILER* One of the devs mentioned that in chase sequences like this, the sounds that the player hears of monsters chasing them are actually exaggerated. When the monster sounds like it is RIGHT BEHIND YOU, it actually isn't. They designed lots of these sounds to seem closer and louder, or even scripted sounds to be played close to the player to enhance the fear without putting the player in serious danger.
What's the point? Well it enhances the fear without putting stress on and breaking immersion for the player. It's scary as crap to hear a water lurker snap its jaws right at your heals, but it's annoying when it repeatedly kills you at the same point in the chase.
Instill fear, not frustration.
Spoiler below!
Something I used in my map is smart monster AI. I would have the monster follow the player around. As an example, when the monster spawns, it is almost surely going to spot and follow the player. I set it up that way. But it is also easy for the player to get out of sight, so when they do the monster follows them. And when the monster reaches a certain point, it is given a new patrol route. This enhances the feeling that the monster is ACTUALLY searching for the player. This continues throughout the whole map. You can see it here from 13:43 til the end, and continuing into the next part (part 3).
Oh and some extra tips:
Watch or play other peoples' mods and try and develop those feelings you get from them into your story. There's nothing new under the sun, but you can always put your own twist on it
Okay I am honest now, every custom story I have maded I have borrowed many scripts and the map included scares from the other player custom stories. But now I think, I have couple good ideas to make something little new and scary
Thanks for this long writing session.
PS: You map has best atmosphere and that "Original awesomeness like basic Amnesia story"
“Life is a game, play it”
(This post was last modified: 08-24-2011, 09:25 AM by HumiliatioN.)
I have given people advice plenty of times in messages on YouTube and I feel I should share some of that here:
"As for making a good custom story, I recommend a proper build up. I've seen a lot of custom stories fall flat by just throwing monsters at you right off the bat and it kind of ruins the experience. Events that prevent the player from moving kind of take you out of the experience as well, so if at all possible keep those to a minimum. The fear of the dark is a big thing with Amnesia, but the frustration of a lack of oil or tinderboxes can make some people frustrated - it's important to find the perfect balance.
The most important thing is, when you're done editing a level, play it through yourself like you don't know what's there. Play how you believe a normal player would play. Do you find it fun? If you answer yes, then I have a feeling you have a winner. "
The person I said this to (Dawnstar42) also made a very valid statement that she has seen many custom stories that just make no sense in terms of building design. "Like putting the master bedroom next to the kitchen or dining room in these big castles? It really bothers me when I watch you play and the layout of the house makes no sense. Is that just me?"
So when it comes to making a map, make it believable. Make it something that you would expect if 'you' went into such a place in real life. Something you would expect to be there and further immerse yourself.
On a side-note, I also loved the area in Palistov's One Light in the Darkness that he mentioned, with that large open area. It was just so 'right'.
(08-24-2011, 09:25 AM)HumiliatioN Wrote: Okay I am honest now, every custom story I have maded I have borrowed many scripts and the map included scares from the other player custom stories. But now I think, I have couple good ideas to make something little new and scary
Well that's how I learned also. I would read through The Dark Descent's scripts for long sessions trying to dissect and understand what they did.
Now after having months and months of experience I can easily build my own script structures from scratch. The key is knowing what you want to do with the game and the steps to take to make it happen.
After you gain more finesse with script you can start to do really cool things that don't simply involve a key or a monster.
(08-24-2011, 09:13 PM)Cryaotic Wrote: I have given people advice plenty of times in messages on YouTube and I feel I should share some of that here:
"As for making a good custom story, I recommend a proper build up. I've seen a lot of custom stories fall flat by just throwing monsters at you right off the bat and it kind of ruins the experience. Events that prevent the player from moving kind of take you out of the experience as well, so if at all possible keep those to a minimum. The fear of the dark is a big thing with Amnesia, but the frustration of a lack of oil or tinderboxes can make some people frustrated - it's important to find the perfect balance.
The most important thing is, when you're done editing a level, play it through yourself like you don't know what's there. Play how you believe a normal player would play. Do you find it fun? If you answer yes, then I have a feeling you have a winner. "
The person I said this to (Dawnstar42) also made a very valid statement that she has seen many custom stories that just make no sense in terms of building design. "Like putting the master bedroom next to the kitchen or dining room in these big castles? It really bothers me when I watch you play and the layout of the house makes no sense. Is that just me?"
So when it comes to making a map, make it believable. Make it something that you would expect if 'you' went into such a place in real life. Something you would expect to be there and further immerse yourself.
On a side-note, I also loved the area in Palistov's One Light in the Darkness that he mentioned, with that large open area. It was just so 'right'.
Thank you Cry, I will try my best skills on this one
Palistov is completely right about installing fear instead of frustration, I still think to this day that the prison was one of the least scary parts of the main game (for me at least) just because finding your way around it was next to impossible, since it was a super confusing maze and another monster spawned all the time. Now I think that the concept behind that area was great, but if they had varied monster encounters I wouldn't have gotten so annoyed with it. What I mean is aside from one or two of the monster encounters in the prison, most of them spawned from a very far away distance and they usually spawned when the player was located conviniently right next to a great hiding spot. For me this became more tedious and boring since you knew that there was some way to avoid the monster and it was almost always easy to finnd, and once you found it you would end up sitting in that hiding spot for a long time completely stopping progress on getting out of the maze. Just something to think about, hope it helps!
EDIT: oh shit, just realized this thread is months old XD i'll leave this up for just to help people anyways though
Posting Freak
(This post was last modified: 12-28-2011, 07:05 PM by Kman.)
Search
Member List
IRC
Help
Running out of ideas!
. 
![[Image: mZiYnxe.png]](http://i.imgur.com/mZiYnxe.png)