Hey, foxies!
I’m always trying to share with you big and important news only but, as we all know, making art of any kind (game development included) isn’t always easy and fun, nor is it always about something huge. Sometimes it is a chain of small, minor and at the same time difficult tasks.
So, today I wanted to share one of them with you. Something small and yet peculiar. Because this inspired me an interesting gameplay idea.
In order to properly illuminate Leah on locations we use lightmaps, which allow us to make our lady fox darker when she’s walking into the shadows or to highlight her on dark locations when there is an artificial light source nearby. This also helps to give the character the desired shade of light to make her look like she is in the environment.
What I do is I map the areas of light and the areas of shadow on the location. Along with those areas where Leah has to be highlighted on a darker background. And then we use this topological map in the game.
This led to the idea of making a stealth-puzzle on some of the dark locations. Such maps can help players to see whether they the character is hidden safely or not.
