The backgrounds in Fingeance tended to look really bland and a tad bit misleading. There wasn’t much going on, there was no life in them and sometime people thought that the ships were flying in the air. It isn’t their fault though: there wasn’t much to go off of. In fact, I bet you didn’t know that you are navigating through a coral reef. Of course you didn’t, there’s no coral! Well, that is about to change!
Underwater Backgrounds
I have been working on sprucing up the backgrounds by adding in some life and vegetation. And that added a lot in terms of ambience and depth (let alone telling you that you are underwater and in a coral reef). Honestly, I could have stopped there as it was looking leaps better but we also wanted to update the lighting. Now, I have already stated how lighting adds so much from before, but when I finally implemented the new lighting system… That was when it was raised to another level. See for yourself.
It really is phenomenal how much of a difference the shadows make and how it helps add a new level of physicality to the game. Right now I am currently messing with a bunch of different situations as both the backgrounds and lighting are still works-in-progress. You can see that I am messing with putting the bosses in this environment to see how they look. But probably the thing that I am most excited about is how dark areas in the game will be. Night time is going to look awesome and I can’t wait until we explore that part more.
What are your opinions on the new backgrounds? Do they look too dark to you? Feel free to let us know!
Other happenings
The new backgrounds weren’t the only thing that we worked on. A lot of what we did was behind the scenes getting ready to add in some more content like bosses and enemies, so we can’t show that off just yet. But what we can say is that we now have a page over at the new Unity website: Made With Unity. Made With Unity is a great place to find new and interesting games made on the Unity game engine (like ours!). You can check it out here: http://madewith.unity.com/games/fingeance. Drop by and share the page with your friends; we really do appreciate all the support you guys have so far given us and can’t thank you enough!
One thing that I feel doesn’t get the recognition it deserves is lighting, and up until recently I didn’t give it that either. Lighting can really effect the mood and tone of a setting, changing something from looking friendly and approachable to menacing and repulsive. Again up until recently I didn’t really give it much thought (well, that’s not entirely true… I knew it was important I just didn’t bother to learn much about it).
So I set out to make a lighting system in the game to help vary the level overtime. And boy does it add a lot to the game. Having dynamic lighting (where the light changes in real time) makes the levels feel more alive. For example, instead of having a three minute level look the same throughout the entire level maybe have the lights get progressively darker as the level goes on; or when a nuke goes off change the lighting to accommodate for that. It helps vary your scene and it isn’t that hard to accomplish (I’m saying this in regards to Unity). Grab a directional light and start messing with the values.
I approached lighting with modularity in mind. I wanted to make sure that I could accommodate any situation that we need as well as transition between two lighting conditions easily. This system has been extremely helpful in making the some of the set piece moments that occur in the game really pop. Though I will be the first to say that I have a long way to go before the lighting is on point, but it really is a proof of concept at this point.
So if you are finding your work looking bland, whether that be 3D or 2D, try messing with the lighting of the scene. If you have already set up your lighting try changing it every once in a while to see what else your scene can invoke. Try it out and let me know what your results are! So far it has been a positive one for me.
Remember to check out Stephen and Lane on Monday and Friday, respectively.