Overview:The Cathedral of Light's Library is a level based on a location from an original story of mine called In Betwixt created inside the HPL2 Engine from Amnesia The Dark Descent, a First-Person Survival Horror game. This was a 3 week project where I took a small section of my story and adapted it to the Amnesia's universe to create a concise experience that gives a small taste of what the story is about while allowing me to improve my level design skills.Here you play as Aldrin Cornell, a beginner priest that participates in a yearly ritual used to halt the spread of darkness in the world. Unfortunately, something goes wrong in the ritual and a powerful being known simply as The Entity is partially released. Seemingly the sole survivor of the ritual, Aldrin must explore the Cathedral of Light in search of a way of stopping the dark beast and saving his own life. At this point, Aldrin just witnessed the carnage brought by The Entity, as it devoured every priest in the Chamber of Summoning. A couple things can be noted here:. As you can see, in the initial design, there's not a lot going on in the second floor.

1. How To Get Amnesia The Dark Descent Custom Stories

The reason for that was that it was designed to be a large optional area that you could look down to the first floor with a straightforward path. Even though the critical path makes good use of the layout for the Main Hall 1F, there's a lot of empty space there that would lead to areas devoid of meaningful content or exploration, harming the experience. To achieve the main goal of the level (Access the Chief Librarian's Office at 6 and get the Two Towers key to open the end level door), originally players were supposed to light up three torches that stood in front of the room. After adapting this to Amnesia, the puzzle had to be scrapped, as that would mean removing a considerable amount of resources used to light up light sources (a common mechanic in Amnesia).

Since this design was created prior to my experimentation with the HPL2 Engine, there was a lack of custom events in the level.After getting more used to the engine and watching a playthrough of the main game, I was able to better determine my limitations and get a feel on how to design puzzles that would respect players' expectation for an Amnesia Level, and as such decided to revisit the initial design. Here's how the points in the in initial design were addressed:. The second floor was completely revamped and made part of the main goal by adding a puzzle and making more use of Scale with a contrast between open and narrow areas. The critical path is more straightforward in the first floor and optional rooms better delineated. The excessive empty space gave room to additional rooms that provide a more interesting layout to explore.

The main puzzle was redone and became a series of small puzzles spread throughout the level that eventually lead the player to a key that opens the Chief Librarian's Office. Tinderboxes (used to light up the light sources in the level) were properly placed in the level, encouraging exploration. Custom events to both showcase the narrative and enhance the atmosphere were added only as necessary to make the level feel more dynamic. Level Lighting: The importance of proper lighting in an Horror game cannot be stressed enough. Given the engine's limitation as far as ambient lights go, I had to spend a lot of time adjusting the Box Lights that were in charge of creating that effect so they were just dark enough to provide players with insecurity, but not pitch black to the point of being unrealistic. Furthermore, some lights can pass through walls, floors and ceilings so I had to be careful to place them in spots where that would not be as noticeable. The Entity and the Final Sequence: To wrap up the experience, I decided to ramp up the tension to the maximum by creating an event that would show the power of the Entity from my original story.

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When the player gets the final key, the majority of the level goes black. As soon as they step out of the room, they can see that the place is full of organic tissue and the Entity screams, telling the player that it is there for them.

At this point the player needs to run as fast as possible to the level exit or die against this invincible enemy. Since I couldn't create the enemy itself, I decided to keep things simple and script it as an invisible enemy that would hit the player no matter what in different time intervals in order to display its power. The idea being that the player cannot hide from it and if it stays still long enough, they will eventually die.

Here's part of the code I had for it. Adding Notes and Mementos: When I started the level, I had the narrative set since it was from my original story.

However, I didn't have the content for the notes that players could collect in the level. So, to create them I had two philosophies in mind: It must add to the overall narrative while serving the gameplay and it must serve as a reward either for exploration or progression. In addition to that, Amnesia also has the Memento feature, which are notes the main character takes from key interactions in the level. I decided to use them to my advantage and create them in a way that hinted players of what to do next without holding their hands too much. Puzzle Design Philosophy: When designing the Puzzles for the level, I set a restriction that they needed to be as believable as possible given the Amnesia universe. I also devised some of them to be more like problems. An example of this would be in the beginning of the level, when you must find a way of jumping across a box that's too high to reach.

Players can solve that in multiple ways, either by locating something that can be used as a platform, or using certain static props as one. Another example is the Secret Books puzzle inspired by the original game. Here players must find and pull a number of books in shelves in order to unlock a passage. In the level, I introduce this puzzle in a very small room with 2 books and later in the level with 3 books in a much larger room. For this last one, a note can be found that contains a hint to locate the books more easily, which serves to encourage exploration.