Level Design for Computer Games - Lighting and interactive elements

As a requirement for this unit, I was presented with the necessity of adding a lighting scheme and a set of level based interactions.

- Initial lighting scheme;
As my level from a narrative perspective was be set at dusk, I needed to light the area relatively well using streetlamps, this combines with any natural light in the scene lights the in-game woirld fairly well. I have also used a set of shanty town camp fire type pieces, in an attempt to guide the used through the shipping container shanty town, this will double up at a navigation method along with being force into combat whilst in the area

I had some ideas for interactive elements from my initial mind mapping and researching and produced a total of five interactions for the player to be affected by;

- Forced walk volumes;

To allow for narrative emphasis to be placed on the character from the outset, I placed a large volume on the courtyard and tweaked the values within the character's blendspace, this specific unit ascertains to another piece of work, but as I am working on the two at the same time I have been able to bring these into engine effectively.

I added an Idle, a Walk and a Run to a blendspace and tweaked the values for each movement speed accordingly to allow me to set a realistic walk speed through level blueprints. I implemented a simple trigger box, connecting an "On Actor Begin Overlap" node via reference, and subsequently set the player speed for the time the character mesh spends within the trigger box, returning to normal speed when the overlap between the trigger and the character ends.

I placed another identical volume near the shipping container shanty town to slow the player down upon entry, as I intended on having the civilians living there entering their homes upon seeing the bounty hunter approaching.

These in turn allowed me to implement another interaction for the blockout.

- Visual Narrative Dummy Run;
Making use of the forced walk volumes, I created a blueprint using an Unreal Engine base character mesh and four spotlights, these spotlights were set to flash to draw attention to the character mesh.

This blueprint was set to a dummy run through the level to effectively guide the player in the right direction during the blockout phase of production. The movement is set by a matinee and is triggered around the same time the player steps into the volume triggering the slowing down.

- Flickering lights;

I have added two flickering lights in an attempt to guide the player with the use of light, for now this is set up using a blueprint with a light in, set to toggle on and off at random intrervals between 0.001 seconds and 0.5 seconds, this gives the toggle a lot of room to work with to provide the user with a varied length of flicker in the light.

The lights are placed with the aim to alert the player to the suspicious character entering the higher class area of the level.

- Day/Night Cycle;
With more lighting in mind, I have also implemented a day/night cycle, which has been put in place to allow the time to progress through the level, the character enters the settlement at dusk, and with time passing the skybox in use displays through to night time. Left for long enough the time of day will roll through back to daytime but the level should be finished before the timer has time to tick around that far.
Taking into account that this is set to scroll slowly into night time, it is easier to show this element via a blueprint screenshot.

- Enemy encounter matinee trigger;

The final level interaction I currently have implemented is within the shipping container shanty town, this is in the form of another trigger box, which sends a play command to six matinees which are applied to six shipping container doors respectively.

These are designed to be used with NPC's, as I would like a group of enemies to enter a conflict with the user, once cleared, the player can progress further through the stage.

I have a feeling I may insert more interactions yet within the level, whether in the form of more enemy triggers, or I may indeed make a cage in a Thunderdome type of style placed in the boss arena to stop the player from running away. Whichever way I go with this, the interaction will need to be triggered, with potential trigger points being either at the beginning of the fight or at any given point within the fight, for example on dealing certain amounts of damage to the boss, possibly 33%, 50% or 75% to make the fight harder progressively.

I'm sure I will think of more interactions throughout development also, as the level progresses in design, following the narrative within.