Lighting For Design Project - Week #1

Week #1

Location Research

Planning Doc

Level Overview

The Player and other companion characters are drunk and intend to break into a theme park after hours so they can enjoy all the attractions themselves without waiting in line or sticking to the park rules. The player character will have to enter first and solve puzzles on their own before.

Story Beats

1. Cutscene Plays where all characters arrive just outside the parks fence and the player is seen entering alone because the others can’t get past the fence.
2. Gameplay starts and the player is free to wonder but NPC’s shout dialogue lines as the player explores (game pushes players away from leaving the 1st area boundaries & NPC’s say new dialogue lines).
3. The player must disable security before anything else, security is the only building that has power already, there is no security staff but the entrances are lock and the player needs to find a way in (Roof hatch), player can pick up a torch here that will be needed later.
4. Now with security disabled the player needs to find a way to open the main gate from the inside so their friendly NPC’s can enter (answer is in the “Storage” building behind cotton candy stall).
5. Open the main gate (friendly NPC’s stare at objects and reel off dialogue).
6. Next is to turn on the mains power which can be found all the way to the right near the funhouse (funhouse is locked until mains is turned on), the player cannot enter mains power building without an item from the shooting gallery (NPC’s suggest throwing an object once the mains has been found).
7. Mains turns on and the funhouse lights up indicating for the player to enter it.

Engine Work

Blocking out the level

                                            (Fig #1)

I started by making a platform and adding large simple shapes that are colour coded to give me an idea of where I wanted certain points to be. Once this was done I hide the simple shapes and began using BSP brushes to create passable buildings that were not just blanket squares and rectangles.

Making it Dark

To make the lighting more effective I decided to make the entire level dark with a night time atmosphere. To achieve this I added a skylight, directional light, exponential height fog, volumetric cloud, post processing volume and lastly I enabled engine content within the content browser then searched for a pre-programmed Sky Sphere blueprint rather then creating my own from scratch.

With all these elements added I went into the details panel and started changing certain values such as Stars Brightness and Sun Height until I was happy with the result, I also made the post processing volume unbound that way it looks the same throughout my level and not just in one spot.

                                                          (Fig #2)

Adding a Torch, Doors and keys

To allow the player to see within my darkened environment I created and placed a torch blueprint that can be collect by the player.

                                            (Fig #3)

For functionality I programmed a Door blueprint that can swing open on a timeline once activated and added a variable that makes it locked and prevents it from opening.

                                            (Fig #4)

Since the doors are locked by default the player needs a key that can open the doors. I made these keys using an array reference that way they act as a modular system where I can duplicate the same key blueprint and change which does it does and does not unlock within the level.

                                            (Fig #5)