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#Post#: 29--------------------------------------------------
Lighting the Way
DIR By: Pam
Date: May 21, 2021, 7:15 am
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In our article series debut last time, we looked at how light
can speak volumes about atmosphere, mood, and how they can be
used to direct a player's feeling. This time, we'll see how
players can be led, quite literally, to particular places simply
by using lighting.
Playing id Software's latest instalment in the Doom franchise
recently, I've been impressed with how the level designers guide
the players through their areas. Green lights shine on ledges
and down pathways, showing us exactly where we can jump to and
where we need to go in some of the more labyrinthine areas.
These stand out wonderfully in a game that's often very red, and
remove much of the frustration of not being able to determine
where to go next, an issue that many players of older
first-person shooters – especially those from the ‘90s – will
know all too well.
It's a tool that's useful in adventure games, too. Being unable
to see where to go and what to examine or pick up is definitely
a problem our genre can suffer from, and using light to combat
it is a sensible and effective option. I like to think of it as
a form of signposting: if we make certain elements more visible
in specific ways, the player will pay more attention to them,
even if they're not in the most obvious or accessible locations.
HTML https://adventuregamers.com/?ACT=49&d=32579&fid=43&f=1.png
One of the things I sometimes have to deal with is drawing a
room exit in a location far to one side, a fair way out of the
player's normal field of examination. This scene from Blackwell
Epiphany is an example of this. Usually I like to direct the
player's attention to the middle of a scene, and just use the
edges for framing and bordering. This works like a vignette
photograph and makes the edges less conspicuous. Here, however,
I have an important scene exit on the right edge of the scene,
way off to the side, and so instead I lit it right up, showing
players very clearly that this is an important exit.
HTML https://adventuregamers.com/?ACT=49&d=32579&fid=43&f=2.png
Similarly, with a room exit that's up high or down low, as with
this scene from Unavowed with a doorway at the top of a
staircase, I often like to depict light coming through in order
to show the players that they can walk through here. Not being
able to see exactly where I can go is one of my major
frustrations when playing an adventure game, and poorly defined
room exits are often a major source of the problem, especially
in situations like these where a doorway is in an odd position.
HTML https://adventuregamers.com/?ACT=49&d=32579&fid=43&f=3.png
Other than room exits, I also like to use light to show
important interactive objects, when appropriate. There's one
particularly important object in this scene from Technobabylon,
and it's easy to guess which it is, with the blue glow of the
terminal's screen shining out from the grimy surroundings,
begging the player to investigate it. The characters in this
scene need less highlighting: classical rules of composition
teaches us that humans are the most interesting element in any
scene, and will always draw the viewer's attention unless
extremely well hidden, therefore people rarely need highlighting
to encourage a player to click on them. Notice also the glowing
blue buckets beneath the stairs that draw the eye to this scene
exit – a happy accident of the designer's outline that suited
our signposting needs quite well.
HTML https://adventuregamers.com/?ACT=49&d=32579&fid=43&f=4.jpg
Using lights to lead the player can be the simplest thing, and
something I like to look at when I play games, especially
because we're used to lights doing this to us in everyday life
and don't always pay attention to it. How does the player know
which sections of the town have power in this map from
Obduction? Simple – they look at which lights are lit, and which
lights are not. This is such a common use of lighting that we
don't even think about it. Devices all around us use small
lights to indicate that they're working, recording, charging,
and any number of other functions, and it's absolutely natural
to know, instinctively, what this means.
HTML https://adventuregamers.com/?ACT=49&d=32579&fid=43&f=5.jpg
In other cases, just making the device itself glow works
perfectly well. We don't need an indicator light to signify that
this machine from A New Beginning is running – we can see it
from the device itself. This is the most basic and utilitarian
use of lights in guiding the player, and doesn't require much
technique or theory to pull off. We simply light up the working
things, and let the dormant things lay dark.
HTML https://adventuregamers.com/?ACT=49&d=32579&fid=43&f=6.png
Other scenes use more interesting and complex approaches to
lighting. I love how this scene from Gabriel Knight uses a light
above the crystal ball to highlight it, and instantly convey the
use of the room. It guides our focus to the most important part
of the room, and makes it pop out. Artists often refer to the
“thumbnail” of an image – that is, how the image or sketch
appears when it's looked at when zoomed right out. The thumbnail
from this particular scene leads the eye directly to the table
with the crystal ball sitting on it, simply because of how
brightly lit and vivid it is. In a dark room it's practically
unmissable. Notice, also, that a light has been shone through
the curtain to help remind the player where they walked in from.
Without this outside light, the exit would be much harder to
spot, even though we see Gabriel walk in from this direction.
HTML https://adventuregamers.com/?ACT=49&d=32579&fid=43&f=7.png
Another great example of leading a player to a particular point,
just by using lighting, is this doorway in Full Throttle. The
actual doorway itself being hidden from the player, we're
nevertheless shown exactly where it is, and our eyes are led to
it instantly by seeing the light shining forth from it. When
considered as a thumbnail, once again, it's immediately apparent
that this is a scene exit, even though we can't see anything at
all of the actual doorway.
HTML https://adventuregamers.com/?ACT=49&d=32579&fid=43&f=8.png
Full Throttle is a particularly good example of using lighting
to lead the player's eye and suggest things that we can't
actually see – probably because of how dark much of it is. This
particular scene has a really neat trick of showing Ben's
presence in a scene without actually putting his character in
there. All we need to see is a rectangle of light, suggesting an
open doorway, and then Ben's silhouette in the middle of it in
shadow, and our imagination tells us the rest of the necessary
information. Filmmakers love to use shadows to convey details
like this, and it works just as well for adventure game
cutscenes.
HTML https://adventuregamers.com/?ACT=49&d=32579&fid=43&f=9.png
Lighting can also be much more subtle in its guidance, though,
and this scene from Monkey Island 2 is a really fun example of a
much less obvious implementation. Notice, here, that the ray of
light coming down lands squarely on the door – which just so
happens to be the most important part of the scene, and the part
necessary for the player to be looking at. By “framing” an
element with shadows, and then hitting the element itself with a
very strong light, it jumps out at us and catches our attention.
It doesn't matter how many details are drawn into a scene, if
one particular element is lit more brightly than its
surroundings, that's where we'll look.
HTML https://adventuregamers.com/?ACT=49&d=32579&fid=43&f=10.jpg
Even in the simplest scenes, those highlights are eye catching.
How does an artist ask the player to look off into the distance,
such as in this scene from Broken Age where they have an
important element that's going to come towards us from that
direction? They light it up. The simplest of ideas, again and
again, proves useful in guiding our players.
Lighting, like all elements of art and design, is a tool, and
one that has a great many uses and applications. The use of
these can be distilled and categorised into what I like to think
of as the artist's toolbox, and with a sufficient vocabulary,
the artist can successfully accomplish anything they wish to –
whether it's making a scene feel spooky, asking the player to
look at a certain item, or simply telling them where the door
is. That's the real role of art in games: beyond looking
beautiful and engaging the player in our stories, it must serve
a function and facilitate the player's interaction with the
world and its inhabitants.
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