Throughout the level, we have been using basic lights just to give our work in progress some illumination. In this section, we are going to transform our lighting into something that seems more realistic for our theme and communicates it to the player. Proper lighting is something that is important to make a scene or environment seem believable. It can make an audience feel anxious or scared, and create a sense of tension. It can communicate danger or safety. In games, it can even be a game mechanic. In our scene, we are going to use lighting to communicate a sense of mystery and a tension that something just might be going on beyond the player's ability to see.

To create this feel, let's think about what we might need. Plunging our corners into shadow and limiting the player's line of sight can go a long way to making them think that something might be stalking them, just out of sight. Using different colored lights to denote danger and safety...

Right now, our game level is looking pretty good. We have given it some props that make the player feel they are wandering around the insides of a small cargo ship. Using lights, we have communicated to the player a sense of danger and mystery. The final step in finishing this level will be to add some basic interactive elements. For that we are going to need a Blueprint.

A Blueprint is a visual scripting engine built into the Unreal game engine that allows artists and other non-programmers to program game mechanics and level events without ever looking at a line of code. I have also found during my years of teaching that it is a great way to introduce yourself to programming techniques, as a Blueprint uses many of the same terms. For our purposes, we will use Blueprints to animate our two doors and our elevator so that our player has some interactive elements to play with:

All Blueprints have an Event to kick them off, followed by...

The next step in our design process is to playtest our prototype level with friends, family, and, most importantly, the people who will be playing our game. Playtesting is one of the most important and overlooked steps of the design process. Many game and level designers want to rush and press on toward a final design and, by doing so, miss out on the valuable feedback that other people who are not involved with the design and construction of your game can offer. It is important to remember that although the level may be fun for you to play, others may find it confusing or missing critical features. Getting feedback from players by allowing them to try the prototype can help us see the things that we take for granted because we are the designers.

If this level were for a commercial game, we would spend some time testing with friends and co-workers, incorporating feedback as we go. The lighting might be too dark or the buttons too difficult to find. We might add more...

In this chapter, we went through the process of building a level using Unreal Engine 4, based on a design we sketched out on paper. The level itself was simple: two rooms connected by a hallway with doors, stairs, and an elevator. We used a selection of shapes and props that were available in the Starter Content folder to decorate our space to fit our science fiction horror theme. We also looked at how to use lights in the level to create tension and convey mood. Through Blueprints, we were able to explore level programming by animating our doors and elevator. Finally, we talked about the importance of playtesting and how constructive criticism from our players can only make our levels and games better. In the next chapter, we are going to move into using Blender and create a prop for our level, based on some of the basic shapes we used to decorate the ship during the whiteboxing process.