Darkness Rising: Production Update 3 (Final Update)

So this is it... The final Dev Dairy Post. The final tuhbooey. Well, to start with the basics, since my last update, I've done a few things. I've textured the items like I planned, I finalized a few more of the sounds, and additionally, I finalized the game lighting; all of which I was able to do easier than expected, which was nice.

Beginning with the textures, I went into the Unity Store's free section and searched for a while, but eventually I stumbled on some good ones. I took those into the project via importing, and I used them conveniently to cover sections of the map at a time. In the end, It worked very nicely, and ended up giving the game a feel that was enhanced from what it previously was. Which notably, was awesome.

Second; the sounds. I spoke on this with the professor a lot in class, but I took my time with the sounds, focusing on feel, and cohesiveness so that they blended well together, be it the background music for the menus and game screens, the evil, dark liquid chasing you up the tower, or the ringing of the win-condition. It ended up working quite nicely.

Then finally, I created the finalized version of the lighting within the level. This, surprised me... because I found an incredibly convenient solution that I kid you not, came to me in a dream; lol. Basically, the problem I was having with lighting was that it wouldn't render them all. The lights were too big, and there were too many of them, over too large an area of space to light up effectively. I deleted ALL OF THEM except three--one of each color, red, yellow, and orange--shortened there respective ranges by half, then Childed them to my player-character, the light orb ball. I set them off of static, so they could move with teh character, and updated there settings so that they wouldn't bake render, but realtime live render. Additionally, I made it so they created harsh shadows, to help with depth. Why help with depth? Because they were childed to the light orb character in a way that made it as if the light orb itself WAS the light source, meaning that no matter WHERE the character being played as is on the map, that area will be lit; All because the lights are attached to it in the way that they were. It felt GENIUS, and at the same time, so easy that it was like a life hack or something. It was wonderful, and the idea came from my roots in enthusiasm for designing lighting for levels. Ultimately, It's not about what is lit, but what is NOT lit. Light is not a means of seeing EVERYTHING, but rather, conveying what information the player needs to see. Using shadows and range of light, showing the player what is important, rather than anything and everything, one can focus the player on what is important to the gameplay, and rely less of creating over the top crazy super-high-render lighting. Its simple, easy, and low energy, which worked perfectly for this game. It felt great, coming up with the idea, and even better when it worked in the way that I had hoped.

Then after that, I did some final checks, made sure everything was fine and dandy, and made my walkthrough video. And here we are.

Here's the link to the game for download, the game sounds, if it is necessary, and my final gameplay walkthrough, which I have uploaded to my Game Dev YouTube account.

Itch.io Link for Game Download: https://jbrauer98.itch.io/darkness-rising Game Sounds Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DgORRwyA3RGRdCFrg4x78ehGcavWPnzz/view?usp=sharing

Gameplay Walkthrough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKdire65Few

And uhhh, that's all folks! Thanks for being a cool class! and thank you professor for giving us so much incite as we went along! It was a really cool class experience. And I learned a lot about my own design processes. Enjoy your summer everyone! :)