Hi all!
As I already mentioned on my previous posts, I'm still a noob to 3D game development; and since this is my first mod/game/project/whatever you call, I'm making lots of design mistakes which takes a lot of time to correct.
As I started to craft first level, I was using Amnesia: The Dark Descent's assets, which are from 1839! You know, there is nothing electronic and my levels looked like they were from Middle Age, like The Wolfman movie's asylum. I have no 3D modeling experience or talent, so I can't model my own objects. It was helpless, until I managed to convert Penumbra models into Amnesia. If you didn't know, Penumbra games are set in the year 2000.
Now that I can modernize the asylum, first thing I did was to put some fluorescent lights instead of so-called lamps which are actually Ceiling Windows of Amnesia. Here's the screens:
As you can see, lamps on the ceiling are not actually lamps, or never meant to be lamps. They are castle's ceiling windows. Second, walls and closet on the corner are converted from Penumbra assets, so they are not Amnesia's too. Although this room uses lots of custom materials, it does not look satisfying.
Now, this is nearly final stage of the room above. Actually you can see first stages of the room on the images (first three images), and I admit that they're quite awful. On the other hand, this image shows the general look of the whole asylum. No more lanterns or torches!
Hopefully, the experience I gained during the first weeks (or months, it's nearly 2 months since I started) will help me to work faster and better. I'll try to get a gameplay video for you soon.
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PS. My mod has made into the news in most popular gaming site in Turkey.
Read here. (Original post)
Hmm have you checked if it's OK to use models from Penumbra?
There are threads about this on Frictional Games' forums; and they're neither banned, locked nor had any warning from developers.
Frictionalgames.com
thread-5611.html
thread-5633.html
thread-5282.html
thread-5523.html
thread-5334.html
... and so on.
There is simply one explanation for this:
"A lot of stuff is illegal, but accepted. This might be one."
Developers never intervened in this topics or asset policies. And since this mod is nothing like a commercial product, it won't be an official problem. Plus, there is a good chance people would like to play Penumbra too, which might get Frictional guys a few sales.
I think devs want to see what players can do, and they try not to get bitchy about it.
That could be true and that would make them some cool developers :)
By the way, the texture on the ceiling in the second image doesn't look so great :/ Does it look the same in game or did this occur due to image cropping?
I can't say anything more useful right now because there isn't much to say about a kind of empty room except for "it's.. empty". I don't know if that's on purpose?
Looking forward to playing a custom story (I haven't even finished the original story but still..) so keep it up ;)
I've converted the texture from Penumbra and I have some mipmap issues. I'll try to get it better. There are issues in conversion progress that I'll have to look into.
As for the room, since I've converted more than 80 objects/textures, I need to redesign my levels. You know, fixing is harder than creating from scratch. So lots of things are missing. But I'll try my best to make it better, better, and beautiful. Hope everyone will enjoy it :)