bobert; I wouldn't say I have any more experience than most of the people on these forums, after all, Parasite Q is only my second game, and my only other game making experience is restricted to just some 2d-gore-shooter games made with Games Factory.
I think the difference is that I'm a (low budget) movie maker first, and I the approach I take to the levels is the same I have when making movies, i.e. how to make the set look believable? There are differences, in a movie I'm usually limited to a certain amount of lights and the look of the set is limited to whatever location we have and to my very limited carpenter skills
On the plus-side, when making a movie, you can hide the hindrances of the set with some effective camera work.
In FPSC I can't hide anything with a "camera", so it's like making 3-d sets, but with unlimited tools and unlimited amount and variety of lights. So I'm taking inspiration from both real world and the sets I see in movies/tv-series, and as a way of hiding the "bad parts", for which I would use the camera in movies, I use darkness. It adds atmosphere and makes the levels look more object-rich when the player doesn't get to see the empty walls/corners etc.
Whoa, what a rant.
Lol maybe I could write a tutorial or something about cinematic lightmapping someday, if someone wants me to.
So, uh, here's a few more images for today, and then I'm gonna go get some sleep
So, here we have a tech room, then a corridor that made me think of Alien, and then last... Well, I think I'm going to rival Deus ex in one thing, and that is the amount of toilets per level! So, a shot of a toilet.
-Astek Games Developer-