Adding Lighting to my Map

I first began to work on my level’s lightning in terms of its navigation, so I selected key areas around the map and lit them with brightly coloured lights to show players where to go. I tried to do this in the places I thought it would affect the flow of gameplay the most

Why did I do this?

I did this because in previous peer reviews it came up that navigation was an issue and players resorted to sticking to the middle level of my map despite there being 3 levels so I wanted to make people more inclined to explore.

How to improve this?

The way I improved this navigation was to colour coordinate the entrances and exits on each level so the player knows exactly where the paths will lead when traversing the map.

I then went on to provide lights to show off the pickups/breadcrumbs in my level, this is also a key part to the navigation.

Why did I do this?

I did this because sometimes in the less lit areas of the map players didn’t notice pickups and weapons because the bright lights used for the navigation took the attention away.

How to improve this?

I improved this issue by diming the navigation lights down to find a nice balance where they are bright enough to see but not bright enough to steal attention away from exploration, also I colour coordinated so that all the pickups/breadcrumbs were all coloured green which is usually a neutral colour.

Directional Light

I didn’t really edit the directional light because the whole of my level is inside/ underground, so I didn’t want any natural light in the map.

Why did I do this?

I did this because the map is underground so there wouldn’t be any natural light, plus I wanted my level to have a feeling of confinement and for the lights to really stand out in the dark to further increase flow in the level

How to improve this?

A way I could improve this would be to either have section in the roof where bits of natural light could shine through to give an extra layer of lighting, or to possibly have a way to get to the surface above the level and have the natural directional light at work up there.

This is the same for the sky box texture and the rays/shadows cast by the sun/Moon, due to my map being underground I didn’t need to consider these as they aren’t a factor that affects my map.

Enemy Presentation

I then went on to add the last of my lights into the level and these were the lights that showed spawn placements in the middle section of the map,

Why I did this?

I did this because the middle section of my map had the greatest number of spawns and they were in corners with no light so this made it hard when being attacked by enemies so I decided to add lights to show the locations in the corners.

How to improve this?

I made the lights dim just so they showed location but not enough to draw focus from the middle sections map were most of the fighting will take place and also so that the eye won’t be taken away from the navigational lights

 Creating Light maps

When it came to creating light maps to increase the lighting detail on my map and the block out pieces I needed to make sure that the UV’s were not overlapping in anyway and the best way to do this was to make the grid power of 2 to match UDK and the Automatic map the UV’s which was fine because the objects were basic in shape.

Why I did this?

The reason for making light maps was to stop misshapen shadows appearing on my object when baking the lights this was cause by bad light maps being used on the objects.

How to improve this?

Well I improved this by spacing out the UV’s on the objects and then baked the lights again, but I didn’t originally know this so when I first seen this issue I didn’t know what to do, so I searched the internet for a solution to the problem that’s when I found this website http://www.worldofleveldesign.com/categories/udk/udk-lightmaps-03-how-to-fix-light-shadow-lightmap-bleeds-and-seams.php

When I first started I didn’t use the production lighting to bake my lights in UDK

Why I did this?

I did this because at the beginning I wanted the lights working before I got them looking nice and not using light mass and production lighting increase the speed at which it bakes the lighting.

How I improved this?

Once I was happy with how the lights worked I then went on to bake the lights in a higher setting and played around with the colours as I spoke about in my navigation section.