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FPSC Classic Showcase / [X9] Stuck on Floor 13 (horror / short)

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ReFure
AGK Developer
14
Years of Service
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Joined: 24th Feb 2010
Playing: AGK
Posted: 17th Oct 2013 19:00 Edited at: 27th Jun 2022 12:02
Stuck on Floor 13

"I'm going to go for a smoke break." said Dave. While returning up via the elevator, the lift stopped. The doors slammed open and the floor displayed "13". Dave walked out before even thinking about pressing the help button. How bad is it being stuck on an abandoned unused floor?

(There are two endings and two guns in-game.)
D0MINIK
15
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Joined: 18th Mar 2009
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Posted: 17th Oct 2013 23:38 Edited at: 17th Oct 2013 23:44
Okay, here are a few tips:

- You need to use a higher lightmap texture size in order to avoid those shadow corners across your segments.
- Create less rooms, less floors and fill them with entities. Also make rooms smaller to make them feel more dense when they are filled with entities (use static entities). Your level design is pretty bare at the moment.
- Do not introduce your first enemy as one killing the player instantly (or make him slow), give your player (who does not know all rooms and floors by heart) a chance so he can enjoy being chased.

The enemy killed me within about a second... and I was not motivated to do the run through those empty hallways again

Anyway, what I really like is that your game comes with an installer, that's always a plus in my eyes (the self-extractor does the job here). The overall presentation, here in your inital post and in the menu and loading screen appears good, too. The placement of your lights is well done, too. Maybe you wanna try give them a smaller radius, I imagine that might look pretty neat.

I don't wanna give this game a full review since I would end up being really harsh (I'm very critical, always). But I want to say you do have a good start here, try to look at your games through the eyes of a new player and you will improve!

Keep it up

ReFure
AGK Developer
14
Years of Service
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Joined: 24th Feb 2010
Playing: AGK
Posted: 18th Oct 2013 18:35
Quote: "You need to use a higher lightmap texture size in order to avoid those shadow corners across your segments."

Oh I forgot about that!

Quote: "Create less rooms, less floors and fill them with entities. Also make rooms smaller to make them feel more dense when they are filled with entities (use static entities). Your level design is pretty bare at the moment."

I know there are few entities. That's the point, it's an unused, "not finished" floor.

Quote: "Do not introduce your first enemy as one killing the player instantly (or make him slow), give your player (who does not know all rooms and floors by heart) a chance so he can enjoy being chased."

A really good point.

Quote: "I don't wanna give this game a full review since I would end up being really harsh (I'm very critical, always). But I want to say you do have a good start here, try to look at your games through the eyes of a new player and you will improve!"


That's alright. Thanks!

Quote: "The enemy killed me within about a second... and I was not motivated to do the run through those empty hallways again "

Yeah, you're supposed to run away from him back to the elevator, memorize the way you went. There is save/load too

Quote: "Anyway, what I really like is that your game comes with an installer, that's always a plus in my eyes (the self-extractor does the job here). The overall presentation, here in your inital post and in the menu and loading screen appears good, too. The placement of your lights is well done, too. Maybe you wanna try give them a smaller radius, I imagine that might look pretty neat."

Thank you!

Quote: "Keep it up "

I will!


- Nic

http://www.niclauke.com
almightyhood
10
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Joined: 9th Oct 2013
Location:
Posted: 19th Oct 2013 03:12
voted for it on steam nice to see a game from here there ;D
hope it helps and happy gaming will give it a try sometime.








have fun stay safe
hood
ReFure
AGK Developer
14
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Joined: 24th Feb 2010
Playing: AGK
Posted: 19th Oct 2013 22:06
Quote: "voted for it on steam nice to see a game from here there ;D
hope it helps and happy gaming will give it a try sometime.
have fun stay safe
hood
"


Thanks alot.

- Nic

http://www.niclauke.com
ncmako
12
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Joined: 19th Feb 2012
Location: Hendersonville,NC
Posted: 21st Oct 2013 20:34
Hi Niclauke
This has really a different approach. Nice, clean concept.
Keep working on this one.
best of luck
ReFure
AGK Developer
14
Years of Service
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Joined: 24th Feb 2010
Playing: AGK
Posted: 21st Oct 2013 23:53
Quote: "Hi Niclauke
This has really a different approach. Nice, clean concept.
Keep working on this one.
best of luck "


Thank you so much!

After the positive response, I am now in the works of a full ten level game about the Mystery on Floor 13. The game (WIP TITLE) is called "The Mystery of 13". Featuring both Indoor and Outdoor scenes, sewers, hospitals, wild west cities, forests, streets, offices, abandoned floors, freaks and alot more! Stay tuned.

Have a sneak peak:



- Nic

http://www.niclauke.com
ReFure
AGK Developer
14
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Joined: 24th Feb 2010
Playing: AGK
Posted: 21st Oct 2013 23:55
And another sneak peak!




- Nic

http://www.niclauke.com
The Tall Man
10
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Joined: 16th Nov 2013
Location: Earth
Posted: 27th Nov 2013 18:00
Great textures! It's so nice to see realistic textures for a change, it seems everyone's into abandoned or sci-fi metallic ones. So your more natural look and feel is awesome!

I had a couple problems getting it to run though. First, my video card is a bit generic, so I had to set a lower resolution in the setup.ini file (the video memory requirement was too large for my system). Then as it was loading a New Game, after several seconds, I got an error that said it couldn't find "crowbar1_N.dds" in the "Files\entitybank\purchased\Errant AI\Weapons\Melee" directory. So I found a crowbar1_D.dds in another directory and copied and renamed it. After that I was able to get the game to run.

In playing the game, there were some textures that didn't display properly. The lights in the ceiling looked like they may have been lightmaps used as visual textures (they were black with detailed lines). Also the crawlspace (and the computer room you couldn't get into) had flickering incorrect textures. Also it took about 5 minutes to load the level after selecting New Game, even when I played the second time.

Now some feedback about the game itself:
I really like the idea, and as I said at the beginning, the look and feel of it. It would be nice if there was a flashlight since so many areas and corners are dark. The flashlight would also allow you to add a few dark rooms (which would add realism to the theme).

There were a number of rooms that were generic though. Even though the floor's unfinished, it would be nice to have something in some of those rooms to make it seem like a room rather than a box added at design-time. Even if just a painting. A room could have some furniture or other storage.

I played it twice. I had the crowbar when the "zombie"?? got me. The crowbar was of no help at all, he killed me instantly. The second time I played, I was in a different area, I was going down some stairs and the "zombie" materialized and came out of the floor right in front of me, there was nothing I could have done. It was as if it was a scripted game-ender for a work-in-progress game.

I noticed in the brick-wall crawlspace (that one had a steady texture), that the walking sounds were of a metallic surface, rather than a brick or more concrete surface. I know FPS Creator isn't always the best when it comes to sound-matching.

The incomplete walls were a nice touch! One thing though, I know such things are solid all the way through, but have partially transparent textures. From the player's viewpoint though, I tried crawling through the openings only to be stopped by an invisible wall. It would be nice if those walls would allow the player to crawl through, or have the spaces smaller so it would be obvious the player wouldn't fit.

On one of the computer desks, there was a piece of paper or something flat, and it was at the same height as the desk surface, thus causing a rendering conflict (two surfaces in the same space).

A bug I noticed was that sometimes I would hear a door open and close as I passed a wall. Obviously a door was on the other side of the wall and was activate by my proximity despite there being a wall inbetween (it was outside the room). Perhaps activating the door upon contact rather than proximity would be a fix. BTW, also, sometimes the door swung out, into me. The physics of that didn't seem right.

The thoughts of the player shown as text... First of all, the text wasn't on the screen long enough for me to finish reading it half the time. It was also annoying that I couldn't move when the text was being shown. As an alternative, what about hearing the player's thoughts instead - like an audio file with a little revert to indicate that it's the player's own thoughts and not another person.

I love your ideas and screenshots of your backon13 and mysteryof13 expansions of this game!
The Tall Man
10
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Joined: 16th Nov 2013
Location: Earth
Posted: 27th Nov 2013 18:22
One other thing... To have zombies on the 13th floor of a regularly used everyday building where people work is a bit far from reality... unless the player has (unknowingly at the time) passed through some sort of dimensional portal or something, and has ceased to be inside the regular building.
ReFure
AGK Developer
14
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Joined: 24th Feb 2010
Playing: AGK
Posted: 27th Dec 2013 16:16
Quote: "Great textures! It's so nice to see realistic textures for a change, it seems everyone's into abandoned or sci-fi metallic ones. So your more natural look and feel is awesome!"


Credits to nbt for that!

Quote: "I had a couple problems getting it to run though. First, my video card is a bit generic, so I had to set a lower resolution in the setup.ini file (the video memory requirement was too large for my system). Then as it was loading a New Game, after several seconds, I got an error that said it couldn't find "crowbar1_N.dds" in the "Files\entitybank\purchased\Errant AI\Weapons\Melee" directory. So I found a crowbar1_D.dds in another directory and copied and renamed it. After that I was able to get the game to run."


Interesting. The crowbar thing must have been something weird.


Quote: "In playing the game, there were some textures that didn't display properly. The lights in the ceiling looked like they may have been lightmaps used as visual textures (they were black with detailed lines). Also the crawlspace (and the computer room you couldn't get into) had flickering incorrect textures. Also it took about 5 minutes to load the level after selecting New Game, even when I played the second time."


Sorry for the loading times, the map has a lot of lightning and it's huge. I know about the flickering, I'm sorry for that. In the full version I'll fix that.


Quote: "Now some feedback about the game itself:
I really like the idea, and as I said at the beginning, the look and feel of it. It would be nice if there was a flashlight since so many areas and corners are dark. The flashlight would also allow you to add a few dark rooms (which would add realism to the theme).

There were a number of rooms that were generic though. Even though the floor's unfinished, it would be nice to have something in some of those rooms to make it seem like a room rather than a box added at design-time. Even if just a painting. A room could have some furniture or other storage."


Thanks a bunch. Flashlight was an idea, but I never put it in. I will think about that. There is some furniture on the floor, but this is actually un-known: The hotel and the hospital are controlled by the family of Maurana, some sick people. They stopped the lift with a meaning. Dave was a random person they picked to test how the monsters would react. Too bad for them, Dave came away. But he wanted to find out what the hell was going on. Neither the police of the city or nobody belived him what has happened. Why? Probably Maurana.

Quote: "
I played it twice. I had the crowbar when the "zombie"?? got me. The crowbar was of no help at all, he killed me instantly. The second time I played, I was in a different area, I was going down some stairs and the "zombie" materialized and came out of the floor right in front of me, there was nothing I could have done. It was as if it was a scripted game-ender for a work-in-progress game. "


You're supposed to run, the crowbar was there for "try to fight back, but die." The different area is ending 2, which is actually a small secret. You are supposed to die in that ending.

Quote: "I noticed in the brick-wall crawlspace (that one had a steady texture), that the walking sounds were of a metallic surface, rather than a brick or more concrete surface. I know FPS Creator isn't always the best when it comes to sound-matching."


It isn't the best, no. haha.

Quote: "The incomplete walls were a nice touch! One thing though, I know such things are solid all the way through, but have partially transparent textures. From the player's viewpoint though, I tried crawling through the openings only to be stopped by an invisible wall. It would be nice if those walls would allow the player to crawl through, or have the spaces smaller so it would be obvious the player wouldn't fit."


Then they could actually beat the game in another way, or glitch it. So I'm not going to fix that, but I might replace the textures.

Quote: "On one of the computer desks, there was a piece of paper or something flat, and it was at the same height as the desk surface, thus causing a rendering conflict (two surfaces in the same space)."


Glitched overlay. (Fixed)

Quote: "A bug I noticed was that sometimes I would hear a door open and close as I passed a wall. Obviously a door was on the other side of the wall and was activate by my proximity despite there being a wall inbetween (it was outside the room). Perhaps activating the door upon contact rather than proximity would be a fix. BTW, also, sometimes the door swung out, into me. The physics of that didn't seem right."


Good idea. Thank you.

Quote: "The thoughts of the player shown as text... First of all, the text wasn't on the screen long enough for me to finish reading it half the time. It was also annoying that I couldn't move when the text was being shown. As an alternative, what about hearing the player's thoughts instead - like an audio file with a little revert to indicate that it's the player's own thoughts and not another person."


What another good idea. Thank you again!

Quote: "I love your ideas and screenshots of your backon13 and mysteryof13 expansions of this game! "


Thanks for the awesome feedback. I'll remember this and have a look at what you wrote and I'll listen to them.

Quote: "One other thing... To have zombies on the 13th floor of a regularly used everyday building where people work is a bit far from reality... unless the player has (unknowingly at the time) passed through some sort of dimensional portal or something, and has ceased to be inside the regular building. "


Just read about Maruana and you will understand.

- Nic

http://www.niclauke.com
The Tall Man
10
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Joined: 16th Nov 2013
Location: Earth
Posted: 27th Dec 2013 20:53
The crowbar file not being found - I have since concluded that when FPS Creator games run out of video memory to a severe degree, it will "not find" a certain file like that. When it runs out of video memory a bit less than severely, the textures are inconsistent and in some places incorrect, such as my seeing a flickering brick crawl-through rather than the steady metallic one you used. So that memory bug in FPS Creator coupled with my limited 8MB of video memory was the cause of those two things. Also, I've since also discovered that FPS Creator maps are very inefficient, for example a floor that spans several segments, is a actually constructed as several floors side by side, one for each segment - highly inflating the vertex count. Maybe Reloaded will be better.

In general, I've found to reduce video memory requirements (and increase rendering speed), it helps greatly to sure all the textures are compressed .DDS files at the most compressed setting (such as DXT1). Some of those settings destroy or disrupt the alpha (when present), so a higher setting can be used for those alpha'd textures.

And idea I had above, I see I had a misspelling - I hope it came through, about the voice instead of text, I meant to say with a bit of reverb, not revert ...but you get the idea.


Looking forward to seeing what you come up with!!
Patrick

Q: ...you mean computer imagery was still based on the paradigm that the world was flat? Even into the 21st century??? Talk about doing something the hard way!

A: Yep! Back then people would render simple shapes with complex meshes of thousands of flat little triangles. Next to the bottleneck processors they used, it's the main reason why their computers were so slow. In the last days of the religious atmosphere of centralization and trade, corporate dogmas had people believing that flat was faster.

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