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Old 25-08-17, 19:52   #3
Caesum
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Joined: Aug 2008
Posts: 12,070
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LIKE:
- I love neatly made backtracking and possibilites to see old room from other perspective. Builders should not be afraid of connecting different locations in many ways. Having an ability to somehow return to the older room through different entrance is a great thing.
- Combinable objects. For some reason a lot of levels prefer to stay classic, with lots of keys and moderately low amount of puzzles. I think this should be replaced with something more elaborate and combinable objects give the possibility to make some really interesting puzzles.

HATE:
- Too many traps, instant-kill etc. The real fun of playing game is when you can avoid traps if you are bright enough. There should always be a hint when danger is coming, so one, if clever enough, can avoid it.
- Pushables. Don't get me wrong, having a pushable from time to time is fun, especially when you can climb onto it. But what I absolutely hate is when there are several pushables with long distances to move them. Awful. Irritating.
- TR4 water collisions. If you're using TRNG, then use CUST_TR5_UNDERWATER_COLLISIONS ASAP. It makes swimming much easier and less irritating.
- Rope. They are just awful. They should be either redesigned or removed entirely. Never use them.
- Too much music. I mean, I love nicely put soundtracks, but if there's one track looping over and over again through the entire level, it gets boring and irritating. The best thing is to have simple, long ambience and music tracks only for special events.
- Too many long flybys. Most of the time they are pointless. If you really insist on adding them, always make it possible to cut off the entire sequence. The best thing is to keep only one or two longer flybys in the entire level, while the rest is just simple camera for 2 or so seconds long.
- Big, empty areas. They are boring, most of the time ugly and don't have anything important. It's better to keep things small but filled with action rather than big and empty.

MISS:
- Focus on gameplay. Maybe it's just me, but I have a feeling that some of the newer games are too focused on graphics rather than gameplay (including my own custom level). It seems that gameplay is always rather an afterthought and most of the time it's boring and senseless. It's better to stay away from building for a while longer, but instead design the level on paper first. Even better, maybe try to make puzzles first and only after that try to make the entire level around them.
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