Stealth Key: Final Update

Lighting

The lighting has been improved drastically from the previous emissives-only build! Light temperature and source color adjustment now better emphasize the color palette and tone of the game. The safest areas have the warmest lighting in yellow and orange hues, while the most exposed and central areas fall into blues. Green was used in transition areas to highlight key paths and objects for the player. The shadows cast by the sunlight at the end of the level are meant to guide the player's eye to the end goal of bright, hopeful light that hugely contrasts with the dark, grungy tone of the game.

Materials

I chose rough and dirty materials to texture the environment as well as matching assets for hiding opportunities. The goal was to make the game feel mechanical and worn out. This is served by old wooden crates, rusted supply boxes, and dingy concrete floors. I custom made some materials such as the metallic vent texture and emissives.

Audio

The music and sound effects were designed similarly to the lighting. The eerie music of impending doom is slightly quieter along the darker edges of the map and above the vents where the player is least likely to be spotted by enemies. The intention of this was to bring the players moments of ease in between their runs through open areas.

There are also sounds effects in the game, specifically from the throwable rocks and alarm system. The rocks make a clattering sound on impact after being thrown, and if they overlap the alarm system target, a siren will go off to pull the guards away from their patrol routes. The sound effects give the player more knowledge about the circumstances of the level.

Click the link for the video!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IqeytvBxfM7m8wBx0W30NZONPWxVnOST/view?usp=shari...

VFX 

The biggest challenge in this game was the timing and of the audio and visual effects on the alarm system. This mechanic allows the player to throw a rock at a target to set off an alarm and distract all of the guards at once, rather than throwing a rock and only distracting one or two guards. The idea is that the alarms are higher risk and higher reward because they are harder to hit without being spotted but can be a great tool for moving through densely protected areas.

The VFX on the alarm gives the player feedback because it only activates when the alarm has been hit by a throwable object. This was implemented in a similar manner to the siren SFX, as it was a Niagara system created as its own file and then connected to the alarm blueprint as a child of the collision. Therefore, the alarm can only emit the pulse wave VFX and the siren sound effect when it has been hit. Below is the original spark effect I designed in class. I think it illustrated the impact well enough, but I wanted it to have the look of something that maybe only the player could see.

I swapped the processing to GPU and lowered the particle count to lighten the load for better performance. It does have an emissive quality and lowered opacity to make it a little bit ghostly and pass the idea that it is only for the player to see. This visual effect went through several iterations, particularly in sizing and opacity, to make sure that it was visible enough to justify including it. Playtesting was pretty simple and took 3 or four iterations before I got to a result I was happy with. Overall, learning how to add this effect helped me understand how to better implement a mechanic I hadn't been successful with before and allowed me to add another layer of interest to my game.

I also implemented a visual effect for the rocks, since they were hard to see in the darkness of the level, and I wanted the player to feel drawn to them. To achieve this affect, I created a glowing niagara effect that illuminates the rocks from below.

Post-Processing

Post-processing was difficult but ultimately greatly improved the visual quality of Stealth Key. The most challenging part was balancing the exposure to avoid foggy effects. I wanted the game to be dark but readable for the players. Adjusting the bloom was a key aspect of this in its blurring effect.

Before:

After:

UI

I designed a logo for the game and used it to customize the menus and overall graphic elements.