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LJ Sonic
August 26th, 2013, 18:02
Hello, here is one of my beta wads, DanceWithShadows.wad.

I got the idea from Tails_Sanatorium.wad several months ago, and I loved it.
I started in making another level in the same spirit: this is a scary place with a lot of odd things that will happend.

Of course it's currently not really scary but it is still interesting.
I added some scary sounds from others wads, a lot of advanced lightning effects, papers with messages, blood lakes, parts of the ceilling falling, etc...
The next releases will have more stuffs, please if you have any suggestion tell me.

If you have another idea for the wad, free to give it.
The Dark Dream? Black Night? Haunted Corridors?

Get the wad here: http://www.mediafire.com/download/kayxipbgbnrgwjo/DancewithShadows-beta.wad.

KitsuneFreak
August 26th, 2013, 21:00
Well, Could we get screenshots?

LJ Sonic
August 26th, 2013, 21:32
No :P
I'll do this but I think screenshots won't be representative of the level since its real interest are the dynamic events.

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Colby
August 26th, 2013, 23:42
NOTE: Haven't played yet, still downloading WAD

If you want to go the a scary gimmick, Sonic Corp did an... ok... job of this (for a doom based pixel game anyway), so if haven't already, play that (It's for 1.09.4)

TaskBarR
August 26th, 2013, 23:52
I recommend a few little jumpscares here and there to really add suspense. I don't mean like screamers, but maybe like this: you walk into a room and suddenly the Tails Doll appears for a few seconds then teleports away, and there's a sonic head in the corner.
Kinda like that. :D
But this looks great so far.

LJ Sonic
August 27th, 2013, 12:04
My aim is precisely to use a lot of jumpscares in the level.
Rex The Fox's suggestion is interesting, however I think using Tails Doll one more time wouldn't be original, and this is the reason that made me adding tons of unexpectable events, like ennemies that appears behind you (with a Deton in a corridor it could be scary no?). I'm not sure of this, but when I started this level I had several ideas, especially inserting Sonic or Tails sprites without eyes on their face, standing in a corner when you enter a room... As I said there are a lot of messages that will contribute to the weighty ambience, such as "There are in the corners...".

This is a list of the stuffs I yet added:
-A black-out on the beginning of the level: the light suddently crackles then turn out with an electrical sound, leaving the player alone in the darkness.
-Odd messages on the floor and the sofa.
-Scary sounds
-Bloodstains, sometimes with a knifes near it.
-Pieces of the ceilling that fall randomly when the player approach it, and kill him.
-Ennemies appearing suddently from nowhere.
-Random INVISIBLE attacks on ALL the players that follows a TD sound.
-...and a lot of new things coming in the next releases.


If you want to go the a scary gimmick, Sonic Corp did an... ok... job of this (for a doom based pixel game anyway), so if haven't already, play that (It's for 1.09.4)
Thank for this tip, ShadCM, but I tried "The Building" and found absolutely nothing scary in this wad...


I'll do this but I think screenshots won't be representative of the level since its real interest are the dynamic events.

Please try this level when you have time, even if it's very short it contains a lot of interesting things that can't be described with pictures.

TaskBarR
August 27th, 2013, 12:17
snip.

Sounds interesting! I'll have to trick my brother into playing it! :D

Jasper the Fox
August 27th, 2013, 16:38
I felt the wad as it currently is a little bit disappointing. Is there an electric fiend chasing you? I heard the noise but never actually saw it and I did constantly get hit. Regardless I didn't find that getting randomly hurt with an unavoidable invisible attack was engaging but rather very annoying, especially when I was trying to explore just to randomly get beaned. I wasn't particularly willing to explore the area all that much either since the bleak hallways and rooms all look the same and I always ended up getting lost. I do find some of your ideas interesting such as the eyeless Sonic and Tails in the corners, but currently I don't feel like there's enough detail in any of the rooms to go looking for them. There isn't any drive to actually explore any of them. You could if you wanted just run through the main hallway and skip all of the rooms because there's nothing there that makes the player curious to see what's inside. A good example of better design is the water leaking out of that one room, I decided to follow it because it looked like something had happened there; and you could add things into a room to make it look completely different from another room so players can tell them apart when exploring the maze-like structure. All together, the experience is currently bland, but I'm sure you can implement your ideas to make it better than it currently is with some work.

dage4 EX
August 27th, 2013, 19:45
inb4 level pulls out a .exe on your face

This is actually a nice idea. Most maps are just the same thing. I really hope you have good luck doing this.

Colby
August 28th, 2013, 01:42
Who better to make this then our Skybase fof master LJ sonic, good luck. Now just to find the time to play/host with this.

LJ Sonic
August 28th, 2013, 08:32
Yeah that's especially for this reason that I wanted to create a such level (even if the events are mainly programmed using Linedef Executors, not only FOFs).

About Jasper's message, I shall agree with him on several points: the "electric fiend" is in fact a Linedef Executor that is trigerred randomly (maybe I should say "SEMI-randomly") to hit the players and make a noise. I was worrying about this especially, the frequency of the hit is too high. Since it is a random call, I can only increase the range of the hit frequency, and eventually the minimum frequency.
Other than that, what you said is overall true, but I wonder how you can lose yourself in a three rooms single corridor... Personally when I play a level like this one I always explore each room carefully, plus remember this level is only a beta, the final version (if it comes...) won't be only a corridor with rooms on the sides, there will be doors or traps (did you met "Eggman" wind? XD) that players need to open or pass through to access the following of the level. That's why if the player(s?) just move forward he(they...) will be forced to come back to look for the switch or the mechanism that will allow the passage.

A last thing, I'm really not a good spriter, then if someone could help me by creating a eyeless Sonic and Tails, it would be very welcome.

TaskBarR
September 2nd, 2013, 06:39
I was wondering, maybe you could open up the sprites in Paint and blacken out the eyes or make them Sonic.EXE styled?

LJ Sonic
September 2nd, 2013, 11:45
I'll see about this.

Colby
September 2nd, 2013, 14:44
I could do some minor Sprite work (In fact I already have a blank eye tails sprite on file from another project)

Phantom-Blade
September 2nd, 2013, 19:24
I was expecting Electric Fiend from "The Mansion" to jumpscare you the beginning when the lights turned off. The killer could have been Sonic.EXE since he acts (A bit/kind of) like Tails Doll, I had to pause and quit because I didn't really want to play it alone. yet its a great wad but you should place Force Shields all over the place. Yet, The scary music you used is from "Tails Sanatorium" and "Tails doll forest". I don't know where it came from but I could use it in Dorn The Artificial's Horror wad. Yet its best to delete all the rings and place Six Force Shields at the spawn area, Just to protect you from getting hit.