Ultimate Game Design : Building game worlds

Building Game Worlds
58
U L T I M A T E G A M E D E S I G N
FIGURE 3-2
Single light with altered brightness
Now, let’s look at how we might control lighting with the intent to transfer mood in
support of gameplay. In the following sections, we’ll look at the various ways that you
can control lighting, all of which are intended to transfer mood in support of gameplay.
Position
The placement or positioning of your lights in a scene must serve several simultaneous
goals: practicality (for example, illuminating the player’s way), aesthetics
(transferring mood to support gameplay), and performance (managing trade-offs between
desired lighting effects and performance-ready lighting effects). Always try to
engineer a level for both maximum visual results and maximum efficiency. To that
end, use only as many lights as you require to achieve your objectives, and no more.
Don’t add lighting that isn’t needed. Don’t add what doesn’t move the scene along.
Don’t add complexity for the sake of complexity. It’s easy to want to go goofy with
lighting. It looks cool. However, throwing lights around like a holiday party at your
Christmas tree doesn’t get you very far. It won’t work out in performance. Be ready
to pull lights out for performance reasons.
In general, you want to position lights to replicate their real-world positions or
source points. If you’re replicating the lighting for a mob boss’s office, players expect