This week's development on 'Relic of The Hollow King' has been going rather well. I have managed to get the Tutorial Dungeon fleshed out, mostly just needs enemy placement and certain triggers. However, the main issue with the map this week has been lighting. When making a game lighting can be just as important as sound design or even the core mechanics of a game. Lighting is what allows a player to feel more immersed and in tune with the game they are playing, it also tends to just make the game look much nicer. For these reasons, it was a task I wanted to get done sooner rather than later. To start with the map was lit only by a directional light, which gave everything a very bright feel to it, which is something we didn't want since the dungeon is in a cave.

In this image, you can see the map while we had the directional lighting in. Great for helping you edit, but terrible for actual gameplay.

To fix this issue I decided to take the time to make a simple torch that could be placed along the walls so that way without the basic directional light we would have some good visuals and shadows from the torches. Now there was a bit of a struggle trying to find the correct balance between making the torches bright enough so the player could see a decent amount of the level they were playing in, but not too bright so it looked like each torch was a lightbulb fixed to a stick. 

Here is the finished torch in the blueprint editor. It is a more simple design but for the current moment, it gets the job done.

This is the map without any directional lighting and all the torches in place. A much-needed improvement from the original.

Now after placing torches and getting rid of the directional lighting, things began to look much better. There was one more small issue that I ended up running into which was since there was no lighting closer to the middle of some bigger rooms, the player could not see sometimes. So because the level isn't fully fleshed out with decor, I decided to give the player a small spotlight at their feet so that way they would still be able to see some of their surroundings with this, but not so much so that the torches were obsolete. 

The player with the spotlight attached to them so they can see in the darker areas, like the one they are currently standing in.

With this last portion implemented we now had a decent-looking level with lighting.

Author: Cameron Sullivan

Date: 3/20/25