I Hate Mountains Forums

UglyDuck

Member

Registered: 2010-06-07

Brief Critical Thoughts

Seeing your response to the critical feedback you've received, I'm in two minds about writing this. Not because I don't want to hurt your feelings or provoke your ire; I understand you don't think about it like that. In fact, I'm just not sure how much use it'll be to you.

Have you ever heard the phrase 'those least receptive to criticism are usually the ones who need it most'? Your choice of response, though reasonable, is poor. You can tell everyone that you're not being butthurt by the criticism till your blue in the mouth, but being defensive about your work is a bad idea. It makes you look feeble, you don't learn anything and you piss off everyone who took the time to write to you. Having humility around this kind of thing usually means you make better decisions.

Anyway. One of the things you kept coming back to, particularly in Icarus's post, was that the problems were out of your hands. That, however, is just a part of understanding your limitations. If, for instance, you start a 30ft high mural and then realise that your ladder is only 15ft tall, you can't just paint half the picture and blame the ladder. If the problem is not being able to code your own game instructor commands, then you need to think of a way around that. Use sound and lighting and textures and instinct to lead the player where they are supposed to go. If you ask me, the game instructor is a lazy man's crutch anyway, and was only meant to introduce the games mechanics to the player quickly, so they could dovetail in with the fast paced multiplayer.

For instance, when I opened the flare window, I immediately thought I was going to walk out onto a balcony or jump down to a ledge, something probably taught to me through hours and hours of opening doors and walking through them. I jumped up onto the window ledge, looked all over the place and couldn't see anywhere to go. Was I retarded to think that? Maybe, but your talent as a level designer should be to cater to retards like me. What was your response?

"This is ridiculous."

I really would like to give you my critical feedback. I'd like to talk to you about measuring light levels and guiding the players eye and the purpose of pacing and crafting an identity and gameplay fatigue and so on. That being said, you don't seem too keen on hearing it. If you want to be critiqued, rather than just worshipped for a bit, try and be just a little more inviting and humble.

I will say, however, that I Hate Mountains is probably one of the best custom campaigns I've played for L4D1. It's no Death Aboard or Coal'd Blood, but it's better than most. Oh, and hire a writer, or at least become friends with someone funny. Riding on the back of established jokes wasn't clever when you made Prelude and it isn't clever now, either.

Last edited by UglyDuck (2010-06-07 17:13:07)

NykO18

Administrator

From: Montréal, QC

Registered: 2010-05-13

Website

Re: Brief Critical Thoughts

One can only work around limitations when he knows about it and when they don't pop up right in the middle of a project (or are things Valve promise to fix since it's a core feature and it never happens, but well... shit happens anyway, it's not entirely their fault).

By the way, if you read this whole section carefully, you'll see that there's only one thing we didn't agree with, which was Icarus' opinion on what makes a good campaign and the particularly mocking tone he took for saying it along with the off-topic mockeries on their TF2Maps.net forum. We don't know him, I don't think he knows anything about Left 4 Dead mapping so I don't think he's entitled to take that kind of sarcastic tone with us, he's no better than we are and we're certainly not mocking his work on TF2 since we know nothing about the way TF2 works. Which doesn't mean we didn't listen and understood his points, it just means we don't agree. If it was his work, he would be free not to listen to our opinions, I don't think this is any different.

What's the point of setting up of forum if we're just entitled to read and take as granted everything that everyone says. We didn't say he was wrong, we said we didn't agree, that was not just me, that was the whole team's opinion. We talked about it before I wrote it, we talked about it after I wrote it and we still agree on what we said. It's not because I'm the one writing that I'm the only one behind the words. This a place for sharing opinions and this warning is repeated on the website page that leads to this forum. But honestly, I don't take people who say "the gameplay plunge deep into the shitter" (or something like that) seriously and that's the kind of things they were sharing off-topic.

Also, I didn't understood what you're talking about with this Portal: Prelude thing and I really couldn't care more. This is a I Hate Mountains forum, not Portal: Prelude, which had its own flaws. If you want to say something, come to the point and don't make semi-sarcastic jokes about it, it won't help anyone.

UglyDuck

Member

Registered: 2010-06-07

Re: Brief Critical Thoughts

One can only work around limitations when he knows about it and when they don't pop up right in the middle of a project (or are things Valve promise to fix since it's a core feature and it never happens, but well... shit happens anyway, it's not entirely their fault).

Except Valve doesn't enter into this. It's your team's work. However, I don't disagree with your first statement. I figure the more humble you are, the less you presume about your abilities, and the more rapidly and smoothly things improve.

What's the point of setting up of forum if we're just entitled to read and take as granted everything that everyone says?

I removed the answer to this from the original draft. You're entitled to do exactly whatever you want on the Internet, especially on your own forum. That doesn't mean it's the most diplomatic thing to do. The point of it, as far as I can see and you're welcome to disagree with me on this, is to listen. You say things through your actions, and through the decisions you make in creating your (pardon me if this comes across as pretentious) artwork. Regardless of whether you disagree or excuse yourself or take offence, defensiveness is inelegant.

If you want to say something, come to the point and don't make semi-sarcastic jokes about it, it won't help anyone.

Fair enough. Here is a tall of wext.

Most of this is going to be presumptuous bullwankery and the rest will be preaching to the choir... I hope you get something useful out of it though.

Darkness. The problem I see with the darkness is not that the levels were too dark, but 1) that the darkness was not used responsibly, 2) that it was applied in the wrong way and 3) that realism often replaced game sense.

1) Darkness, generally speaking, makes a game feel more suffocating or intense. It's a system of removing the availability of information. But gameplay dictates that the player still needs to be able to access that information some how, in order to make decisions, which means darkness needs to be used as a way of pacing the player's interactions so that they concentrate more on acquiring information. If the information simply is not available, then the player is stumbling through your level, making erratic and uninformed decisions.

Good examples of using darkness are, for instance, rare checkpoints of light that the player has to make shuttle runs between, or walking through a large building where the light cuts out every 30 seconds. Bad examples of using darkness are throwing the player into an unlit maze and asking them to navigate through it, then back again but this time in a hurry. A player has no sense of touch in this world, they are relying on visual and audial information to progress, and denying that information is disrespectful to the player's limits. This has wider implications in a world that is full of moving, hostile obstacles that can stop you dead still. Since you have no visual anchor, and no immediate sense of your attackers, conflicts will feel cheap and unmeasured.

Another problem is fatigue. Players will eventually get tired of the dark and should be rewarded with an escape, especially for panic events. Hearing a horde shriek while rushing towards a safe, lit building should be the climax of that dark atmosphere, not being forced back through it nose first. If the player has spent the last 20 minutes concentrating super hard at the screen because they can't see anything, it's common sense to give them some kind of respite. This is one of the reasons I was so hot for Crash Course. The pacing moved the player through light and dark areas constantly, giving them rapid, regular moments of safety and danger.

Imagine, for instance, a single long corridor with frequent dips in the walls to back into and lights that go out periodically. No music, no hordes, just ambient dripping water and the occasional zombie clawing at your neck. This kind of atmosphere was actually one of the things I loved about the church level. I wanted to see that taken further.

2) Personally, I couldn't see anything on my monitor. Since I run the game in window mode, I couldn't turn the brightness up, and I don't particularly want to change my monitor settings. So, I have to strain my eyes to play the game. This may not be a problem for people with better monitors, but as mentioned above, you're developing for the lowest common denominator, the everyday retard. Even so, this isn't specifically to do with my monitor or my game, but to do with the way the bright/dark areas were applied. Intelligent use of the mechanic is better than plain, outright appliance.

First, these are two screenshots from the beginning of both No Mercy and I Hate Mountains, with the light levels displayed in the to left. Whereas NM has a steady gradient of tones with emphasis on the dark, 99% of the tones in your map are in the darkest 20% of the spectrum, and the other 1% is hud elements. The problem isn't that the world is dark; it's that it lacks definition and contrast. This makes it a strain to identify on normal screens and impossible for the low end users. Throw in lack of AA or low resolution textures and the game looks rough and washed out. You can lead the player through artistically intentional dark spaces but if the whole game is dark, it becomes nigh unplayable.

Second of all, the point of the flashlight is not to have it on constantly. We don't view everything through a 40 degree cone, so in order to keep the player immersed in the world, allowing them to turn the flashlight on and off periodically gives it a reason to exist and a reason to be used in the actual physical gameworld. Hence the reason why L4D maps traditionally have bright main paths and dark, rewarding side rooms (increased risk/reward allows for the illusion of tactical decisions). Additionally, the flashlight creates uninteresting lighting, since you get a perpetual view of the world through one small white circle. A good use of darkness includes defined silhouettes, long shadows and dramatic composition. This is something that is largely already provided through fog, the skybox and light halos, and defined through props, rocks, trees and displacements.

If you want to make the world dark, that's super. But you have to do it through a careful, composed gradient rather than just hard falloff above a certain luminosity.

3) Finally, you made a point about not putting lights on the roof for realism's sake. The great thing about a zombie apocalypse is that you can make shit up. If a person was trying to climb to the roof of the mansion, he may have been carrying a light, only to get pulled down by a smoker and fall to his death. The player finds his corpse on the lower half of the roof, clutching the light. Or if that's no good, maybe there's a fire burning in one of the rooms below, maybe the building has a searchlight bouncing light off a white wall, maybe the room next door just happens to be a tanning salon.

Part of telling apocalypse stories is that there are no rules; people can act any way you want them to, and this provides gameplay context. Maybe someone decided to horde flares in the attic by a window for a sense of comfort, and thought he should chuck some down so that he could see the zombies coming. Being limited flares, maybe they go out as the survivors walk past them and plunge the roof into darkness, forcing them to watch their step, keep their eyes out for landmarks on the way down, etc. Maybe you can put gas cans on the ground that the survivor is likely to see and shoot on the way down to silhouette the roof edge. All of these are things that solve a gameplay problem, while still being realistic, while keeping the player immersed in the world. Realism doesn't even have to enter into it, provided the level feels fair and believable.

And that's just lighting.

My point in all this is that there are always alternatives, and reasonably simple ones that often result in better creations, particularly in the map making process. If a few people say they like something, that's cool beans, but if a few other people don't like it, perhaps there's a better way that can satiate more than the majority. And don't forget that the wider audience is your main playtest group. Playtesting with 100, 200, hell even 500 people is small fries compared to the 30,000 who have already downloaded it and are playing it right now. A sample of however many people you got in private beta is still only a sample. The people playing it now are the ones who will give you the most accurate example of what people think of it. Y'know, because they are the people.

But like I said before, I liked IHM. If you have history with this particular guy or if he has said dickish things elsewhere and I don't know the whole picture, then I take it back, but he seemed pretty polite and objective to you in that thread.

NykO18

Administrator

From: Montréal, QC

Registered: 2010-05-13

Website

Re: Brief Critical Thoughts

Holy... well, that's a wall of text but at least I saw a lot of interesting things. I'll read it tomorrow but I think that wasn't necessary, we already agreed multiple times that it was a bit too dark and that we were working on it for the next version. But well, I'll still reply tomorrow, hopefully that'll gonna help Marc who's working on the lighting at this very moment.

For now, I'll just react to the thing you say in your conclusion.

My point in all this is that there are always alternatives, and reasonably simple ones that often result in better creations, particularly in the map making process. If a few people say they like something, that's cool beans, but if a few other people don't like it, perhaps there's a better way that can satiate more than the majority.

There is always a way to please more people and make things better, but as you try to please more and more people, the amount of work required exponentially increase to please fewer and fewer people until all that's left is the guy who don't like anything anyway. The point here is to define where you stand on this chart and as amateurs using their free-time to work on this project, we are definitely not at the end of the chart like Valve could be.

Our goal was simply to do better than what's in store for Left 4 Dead on the custom market and at least please... let's say... 3/4 of the people who were going to play it. Considering the feedback we got from the release and what we read while lurking on the Internet, at least 95% of the reviews are positive, this is far beyond anything we wish we could achieve and far beyond anything I got on any of the projects I ever undertook in my life.

We tried to please the most people we could with the resources we had and the time and devotion we could put. But sometimes, you just have to admit you can't do better without seriously considering it as a full-time job. I almost lost my own job trying to make this campaign the most perfect I could (late in the morning, sleeping on my computer during the day), there was no way we could have made it better with the resources we had because in the end, it's a real job.

whitevioletdragon

Member

From: Mexico

Registered: 2010-05-31

Website

Re: Brief Critical Thoughts

Except Valve doesn't enter into this. It's your team's work. However, I don't disagree with your first statement. I figure the more humble you are, the less you presume about your abilities, and the more rapidly and smoothly things improve.

I dont agree with that. Humble doesnt mean to accept everything people say about your work. In fact, humbleness doesnt exclude to recognice your habilities, qualities and good or skilled parts of your being.

I also didnt get your point. This forum is for criticizing the campaign for better or for worse. I said there has to be a chriteria for doing CAMPAIGNS REVIEWS as simple as:

PROS

CONS

Make your list, get to the point. If there is no PROS (which i dont think this is the case at all) then fill all the CONS list but being fair and having facts and screen shots or whatever material that help to all the people of the forum and the L4d community to understand why and what did you like and didnt like.

Instead of making this a personal issue try to be obective and share something nurishing  (this is not a Mwf2 forum where all people flame each other about their noob tubes or whatever shit they flame in those forums)

Good day

whitevioletdragon

Member

From: Mexico

Registered: 2010-05-31

Website

Re: Brief Critical Thoughts

Holy... well, that's a wall of text but at least I saw a lot of interesting things. I'll read it tomorrow but I think that wasn't necessary, we already agreed multiple times that it was a bit too dark and that we were working on it for the next version. But well, I'll still reply tomorrow, hopefully that'll gonna help Marc who's working on the lighting at this very moment.

I was thinking in more "powerful" lamps attached to the weapons. Some times the lights of the lamps are not usefull during the combat. But also the "darkness" in the campaign has its charm...I havent played it in versus so i still dont know how this lighting issue can affect the survivor team vs the infected

XD excelent job

NykO18

Administrator

From: Montréal, QC

Registered: 2010-05-13

Website

Re: Brief Critical Thoughts

Instead of making this a personal issue try to be obective and share something nurishing

I don't think he's making it a personal issue and was pretty helpful. I don't know if you were talking about this thread or another one, but I've got nothing to say against UglyDuck to be honest.

UglyDuck

Member

Registered: 2010-06-07

Re: Brief Critical Thoughts

I also didnt get your point.

You don't say...

I also want to add a few things.
1) Map 3, The Church is possibly one of my favourite L4D levels, ever. I played that on versus last night and it's spectacular. Just raced through it again and it's by far the most beautiful and well paced map of the lot. Very impressed by gas can placement, light variation and the constantly unfolding learning process of finding your way through the level. Only thing I'd say is that it needs to be more directional. Try playing with lights a bit more on that level. Maybe give the player the option to turn on lights if they take the wrong turn, so they have something to do there. It also balances difficulty, since a person making the right decisions ends up with a darker, more intense play session.

2) There's a brilliant sniper spot in Map 4, which offers a nice break form the slog of murdering people by letting you murder them from a distance. Unfortunately, the area beneath (the target range, if you will) is completely unlit, so you can't see or shoot anything. Great idea, shoddy execution.

3) Don't use hand written font for writing on the walls. Given that the maps are of such a high quality, seeing a rookie mistake like that is disappointing. Always hand draw your wall scrawlings.

Cameron:D

Member

From: Australia

Registered: 2010-05-23

Website

Re: Brief Critical Thoughts

Try playing with lights a bit more on that level.

Yeah, I was thinking this too. You should use lights to guide the player rather than having everything well-light. If some of the rooms with multiple exits, maybe dim the lighting in the room and brighten up the pathway you are supposed to be taking.
I've pretty much memorised the route now, but it may make it less confusing for new people.

UglyDuck

Member

Registered: 2010-06-07

Re: Brief Critical Thoughts

Try playing with lights a bit more on that level.

Yeah, I was thinking this too. You should use lights to guide the player rather than having everything well-light. If some of the rooms with multiple exits, maybe dim the lighting in the room and brighten up the pathway you are supposed to be taking.
I've pretty much memorised the route now, but it may make it less confusing for new people.

Pretty much this. Play through No Mercy 1 and look at how each lit area leads you to where you are supposed to go. The light above the door, the fridge, the tv, the bathroom light, the stairs and so on and so on. Also, fun fact for you, at the bottom of the stairs, there's a flat white door pointing toward the room on the left, the lines of which encourage you to go into that room and find the corpse on the bed. On a side note, confusing stuff can be cool, so long as the player doesn't feel forced into it or cheated by the level design.

Last edited by UglyDuck (2010-06-08 12:27:31)

NykO18

Administrator

From: Montréal, QC

Registered: 2010-05-13

Website

Re: Brief Critical Thoughts

Only thing I'd say is that it needs to be more directional. Try playing with lights a bit more on that level.

Yeah, that's on our plans.

There's a brilliant sniper spot in Map 4, which offers a nice break form the slog of murdering people by letting you murder them from a distance. Unfortunately, the area beneath (the target range, if you will) is completely unlit, so you can't see or shoot anything. Great idea, shoddy execution.

That too, is on our plans.

Don't use hand written font for writing on the walls. Given that the maps are of such a high quality, seeing a rookie mistake like that is disappointing. Always hand draw your wall scrawlings.

Sorry, we don't have the hardware needed for this (a.k.a, a graphics tablet) and it's definitely not worth hand-drawing everything, scanning it, tweaking it, reworking it, exporting it, converting it, importing it into the game, testing it, fixing it, and so on.

moroes

Administrator

From: Vincennes (France)

Registered: 2010-05-13

Website

Re: Brief Critical Thoughts

Try playing with lights a bit more on that level.

Yeah, I was thinking this too. You should use lights to guide the player rather than having everything well-light. If some of the rooms with multiple exits, maybe dim the lighting in the room and brighten up the pathway you are supposed to be taking.
I've pretty much memorised the route now, but it may make it less confusing for new people.

Pretty much this. Play through No Mercy 1 and look at how each lit area leads you to where you are supposed to go. The light above the door, the fridge, the tv, the bathroom light, the stairs and so on and so on. Also, fun fact for you, at the bottom of the stairs, there's a flat white door pointing toward the room on the left, the lines of which encourage you to go into that room and find the corpse on the bed. On a side note, confusing stuff can be cool, so long as the player doesn't feel forced into it or cheated by the level design.

I did some tests yesterday on the manor-house with the lighting, we'll see today how are the results.

Be sure that we read all your feedback (of course, as you can see Nico answers for all of our little team) and, more importantly, we talk about all your feedback together!

UglyDuck

Member

Registered: 2010-06-07

Re: Brief Critical Thoughts

Don't use hand written font for writing on the walls. Given that the maps are of such a high quality, seeing a rookie mistake like that is disappointing. Always hand draw your wall scrawlings.

Sorry, we don't have the hardware needed for this (a.k.a, a graphics tablet) and it's definitely not worth hand-drawing everything, scanning it, tweaking it, reworking it, exporting it, converting it, importing it into the game, testing it, fixing it, and so on.

Whipped this up in about 5 minutes. Admittedly it took me 3 hours to work out how to import the texture to hammer, render the map and take the screenshot, but at least I learnt something from it. Drawn in Photoshop with a bog standard mouse. Also, I fucked up and saved the final image as a targa rather than a png, so I lost the transparency and had to fix it.

I did some tests yesterday on the manor-house with the lighting, we'll see today how are the results.

Be sure that we read all your feedback (of course, as you can see Nico answers for all of our little team) and, more importantly, we talk about all your feedback together!

That's super-awesome brilliant.

Last edited by UglyDuck (2010-06-08 15:11:51)

NykO18

Administrator

From: Montréal, QC

Registered: 2010-05-13

Website

Re: Brief Critical Thoughts

No offense, but as a matter of fact, I prefer what we did with hand-written fonts than what you did. There's no way writing with a mouse will ever beat using hand-written fonts. And even if it only took you 5 minutes to draw this, there's probably 15 minutes of work to actually make it look like something better. Multiply this by the amount of graffiti in the campaign and you end up with approx. 15 hours of tedious work that will take up to two weeks of work on the campaign considering that we can only give away one or two hours a day for this and not everyday. Now I think you might start to understand why things are not as perfect as they could be since we're still only talking about little graffitis (spoiler: because we also have a life).

Prisoner416

Member

Registered: 2010-06-08

Re: Brief Critical Thoughts

Whipped this up in about 5 minutes. Admittedly it took me 3 hours to work out how to import the texture to hammer, render the map and take the screenshot, but at least I learnt something from it. Drawn in Photoshop with a bog standard mouse. Also, I fucked up and saved the final image as a targa rather than a png, so I lost the transparency and had to fix it.

I'll respond to that image with one I just made.

http://img267.imageshack.us/img267/9662/dumpedp.jpg

Squall

Member

Registered: 2010-06-09

Re: Brief Critical Thoughts

just registered to suggest this, why not ask the forums to create the written graffiti and post the files so you can put into use. This way you saved a lot of time and also, make the people happy that they can contribute.

NykO18

Administrator

From: Montréal, QC

Registered: 2010-05-13

Website

Re: Brief Critical Thoughts

Well no, we have a tight agenda and we can't wait for external people to finish their work in order to plan our releases and tests. Also, it's our project and we don't really want to include unknown people, we'd like to be able to say "we did it" without having to add "apart from this, and this, and this...". That's not something we'd like to do.

CosmicD

Member

Registered: 2010-05-23

Re: Brief Critical Thoughts

i can already imagine it, people in a zombie apocalypse splitting beans over gramatical errors or font face in the saferoom

Zhnigo

Member

Registered: 2010-06-13

Re: Brief Critical Thoughts

it's definitely not worth hand-drawing everything, scanning it, tweaking it, reworking it, exporting it, converting it, importing it into the game, testing it, fixing it, and so on.

That's what sets you apart from professional developers.

it's our project and we don't really want to include unknown people, we'd like to be able to say "we did it" without having to add "apart from this, and this, and this...". That's not something we'd like to do.

And that's what sets you apart from regular modmakers. :(

Last edited by Zhnigo (2010-06-14 10:34:29)

NykO18

Administrator

From: Montréal, QC

Registered: 2010-05-13

Website

Re: Brief Critical Thoughts

it's definitely not worth hand-drawing everything, scanning it, tweaking it, reworking it, exporting it, converting it, importing it into the game, testing it, fixing it, and so on.

That's what sets you apart from professional developers.

Yeah, I think you also forgot about the part where you can work on it 8 hours a day while being paid. I'm almost sure that's the main difference but of course I can't be 100% sure, because I'm not a professional.

it's our project and we don't really want to include unknown people, we'd like to be able to say "we did it" without having to add "apart from this, and this, and this...". That's not something we'd like to do.

And that's what sets you apart from regular modmakers.

And why is that a bad thing?
I don't like how AND I don't understand why "regular" modmakers work the way they work, which seems more like an awfully unproductive way of working for the most part of them. Applying professional concepts to unprofessional people and for most of them, what is just a hobby, isn't really the way to proceed in my opinion. But feel free to explain why you think we're wrong because we obviously failed in providing a great campaign that was downloaded 100,000 times in a week.

Zhnigo

Member

Registered: 2010-06-13

Re: Brief Critical Thoughts

Wall writings. I honestly don't see why you can't let your fans rework them for you.

NykO18

Administrator

From: Montréal, QC

Registered: 2010-05-13

Website

Re: Brief Critical Thoughts

Wall writings. I honestly don't see why you can't let your fans rework them for you.

Because we're not gonna ask every people who want to help to do a tiny part of the project and then wait for everyone to eventually finish their work on time... or not... or not at all. This is not a free party where everyone brings his friends and a few drinks, this a serious project made by three friends who want to work together, and not with random strangers. You seem to confound modding and open-source. If some teams want to work this way, it's their call, it might explain why everything takes ages most of the time.

Squall

Member

Registered: 2010-06-09

Re: Brief Critical Thoughts

it's not like we want a credit for what we done, we just want the game to look better. Forget the credit, just say it's all yours. Not being sarcastic, we just want the best out of the game.
Also, why do you have to wait for everyone to finish and compile. Just compiled till the next release date of the map. The extra one will just have to wait till the next next release. That's all

Last edited by Squall (2010-06-15 07:03:28)

NykO18

Administrator

From: Montréal, QC

Registered: 2010-05-13

Website

Re: Brief Critical Thoughts

Of course, but the hardest part is not to make it to the release, its releasing.
There's like a thousand things that could go wrong with packaging, delivering, hosting, mirroring and such. More importantly, it splits the player and server base in two each time we release a new version because the older becomes incompatible with the new version and the new version becomes incompatible with the dedicated servers already running. Releasing too many versions is the best way to shoot yourself in the feet. We don't plan on releasing anything more than a finale 1.2 version that fixes everything.

llod

Member

Registered: 2010-06-08

Re: Brief Critical Thoughts

Try playing with lights a bit more on that level.

Yeah, I was thinking this too. You should use lights to guide the player rather than having everything well-light. If some of the rooms with multiple exits, maybe dim the lighting in the room and brighten up the pathway you are supposed to be taking.
I've pretty much memorised the route now, but it may make it less confusing for new people.

Pretty much this. Play through No Mercy 1 and look at how each lit area leads you to where you are supposed to go. The light above the door, the fridge, the tv, the bathroom light, the stairs and so on and so on. Also, fun fact for you, at the bottom of the stairs, there's a flat white door pointing toward the room on the left, the lines of which encourage you to go into that room and find the corpse on the bed. On a side note, confusing stuff can be cool, so long as the player doesn't feel forced into it or cheated by the level design.

This seems to be a recurrent theme. Personally I'm not a huge fan of linear gameplay, which is one of the reasons I enjoyed IHM more than most, and could have quite happily seen less pointers hinting at which direction to go, be that lighting or arrows. The continuous darkness felt more realistic.

And what is wrong with being more confusing? I think it's fair to say that in the event of a zombie apocalypse it would be quite normal to get lost frequently as following a set path would be extremely difficult. I often imagine a game scenario where you start in the center of a city and where you have the choice of fighting your way out via a multitude of different ways in different directions (in effect a completely open and fully explorable realisitc city overun by zombies). I suspect this just isn't technically possible with todays technology(?).

Why should custom maps adhere to the concepts that valve have put into their own maps? These types of criticisms come across as ignorant of what I suspect the map designers were targetting.