Ultimate Game Design : Building game worlds

Building Game Worlds
60
U L T I M A T E G A M E D E S I G N
Point or Ambient Lights
Point or ambient lights are often used as “world” lights since they throw off light in
all directions from a single source point. This is the kind of light you use to fill physical
spaces, to simulate sunlight, and in large part, to set the overall lighting feel for
your ambient or “available” light in a scene. Refer to Figure 3-2 for an example of using
a point or ambient light.
Spotlights
Just as in many physical situations, such as on theatrical stages, spotlights are used in
game scenes to feature or highlight certain props or characters—in short, to make objects
or characters stand out from the rest of the scene or the background in some way.
You can also use spotlights to indicate gameplay.
Spotlights can suggest exits, unexposed passageways, clues, and damageable items,
or simply lead the player’s eye to “don’t miss this” features in your game scene.
Maybe you are using spotlights to accent statuary like our frozen beast in the cathedral
example in Chapter 1. It will be a visual treat to see a spotlight on a transfigured,
steaming frozen beast as you help to tell the curse backstory for your level.
Spotlights take the shape of displaying light in cones, and you can control many of
their display properties to get your desired effect. You can adjust the radius of the final
light, blur out the edges of the spotlight, and so forth. Figure 3-3 is a two-light scene
demonstrating a spotlight on a prop with additional lighting support coming from an
overhead ambient light.
Directional Lights
Directional lights are soft fill lights. They can be used to bring out detail. Directional
lights can be aimed or targeted in your scene at props or items to provide fine detail and
highlights. Figure 3-4 shows the effect of adding a directional light to fill or detail an
object. Again, this is only a two-light scene with one ambient and one directional light.
Lighting Strengths or Multipliers
The strength or intensity of your light, regardless of type, can be adjusted for the kind
of lighting intensity effects you desire. The specific way this is controlled varies according
to the software tool you’re using, but the end result is the same. You will
want to adjust light intensity for your scene on an individual light basis and global light
basis. Lowering the lights will almost always add drama and suspense to your scene.
A little warning: don’t go overboard with lowering the lights. Some games pull
back so far on lighting that it is difficult to navigate a character through the scene.
You don’t want to sacrifice “playability” or create player frustration (“I can’t see
anything!”) just because you like the look of extremely sparse lighting. This kind of