Okay, heads up, if I'm posting in the wrong forum, tell me, man.
This is an un-organized list of tips and a couple of step-by-step instructions for making a better, more full level. If you guys have any more advice, I'll add it if you wish. This is a guide consolidated for newbies, but may be useful for pros as well...
==RANDOM TIPS==
-Do not make too many dynamic entities. FPSC gets slow (in case you haven't noticed) when many dynamic entities are in one place. By all means, you can still have various dynamic entites, just for un-intractable scenery, leave it static for the sake of the game's ability to run smoothly.
-Objects that can be thrown need higher "Physics Force Damage" if you want them to kill. 100 doesn't do it. You need to set it to something higher, if you want it to kill/break stuff with.
-Make the game vivid, create much lush scenery around you so the game looks...full. Real. Even the background stuff meeds to be appealing. But for stuff that you can never touch/shoot, make it static for the sake of running smoother.
-Always keep Full Shader Effects
ON!!! You would be surprised what a massive difference it makes. You can turn on Soft Lightmapping as well, but always try to keep shaders
ON. Though, if you do have a low-end computer or you don't have a super-computer to load games with, you can turn shaders off.
-Keep a lot of story involved in your game, whether it be dynamic story scenes, StoryZone scenes, SoundZone voice-overs (the easiest) or whatever, keep it as interactive as possible.
-Make sure you don't make the level a straight line, don't be afraid to add dead-ends. Make the game some-what like a maze (don't make it completely maze-like, just various rooms) and don't make the path so obvious, but make it obvious enough to be fun.
-Buy MP7. You'd be surprised how much it can help with your scenery.
-Ambiance levels can be your enemy. If it is set at zero, WEIRD things can happen. The only real thing I could find was that because the ambiance was low, the enemy's blood splat color turned black or dark red. 25 works nice, but if you want strange blood (and a creeeeeeepy game) set the ambiance low.
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The Pheonix Game Protection (PGP) software can do wonders for your games. You can allow your player to change the graphics settings and you can encrypt your game and safely seal it up so NO ONE can use your material/pirate your material. So, all of your banks will be locked up so they cannot be touched, or even seen. Not to mention it's got a Standard free version, which adds a PGP splash screen (mind you, it lasts for about 10 seconds and adds some obnoxious sound in the meantime) to your game, but that ain't a problem.
I'll build on this as I find out more about FPSC and if you would care to add anything.
==AAAGREEN TIPS==
"if you want shadows, set the ambience level to about 5-10, close fpsc, open both the setup.ini and buildsetup.ini and change lightmapquaility to 20-50, and set lightmaptexsize to 312-512. Save them, open fpsc and:
open the preferences box. If you want:
all static entities to cast a shadow, quick/soft lightmapping
all static entities and segments to cast a shadow, full lightmapping
please note the games will take longer to load"
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