Part 1: Night time

I am writing a handful of articles concerning the usage of atmosphere in games. It seems that many klick games have one set of tiles, which rarely vary in tone from level to level. There are obviously a few exceptions to this, games which include darker scenes for night, etc. However, I think that more professional games make good use of bright sunshine, or torential rain. Why don't we klickers use it too. Now, before I get any negative posts, I know my games previous to this havn't used it, but Yokoy RPG will utilize the full use of a variating atmosphere from level to level.

The first topic I will write about is night time. I have included a file to explain what I say in order to eliminate any confusion. It contains a help file & is UNLOCKED . The great thing is, my night time code does NOT NEED ANY CODE. Well, this is only one way to create a night time effect, and basically I am allowing the player to only see what he could if it were real darkeness.

FILE: http://www.theyeateshome.co.uk/Downloads/Torchcode.zip 146kb

Now, this method makes good use of the 'object preferences' concerning active objects. What happens is I have created a yellow torch light which animates in a funky torchy way. This has a special ink effect (I use TGF) called 'AND'.
When this is moved (following the player) around the level, it adds the special backdrop colours- see the example- to the bright light & thus enhances them. If your confused download- its all explained easily there.

Now this is only one method of creating darkness, and does have a few flaws, as explained in the file. A few other ways include using a large semitransparant black active overdrop over the entire game field (memory consuming so only use on small screened, non scrolling games) and then make various animations which lighten & darken the colour. If you carefully fade out and then destroy the overdrop you actually get a very nice effect. However- as said- memory consuming.

Another way to get a nice dark atmosphere is to use careful application of music & sound with your graphics. Now I'm not saying that a brightly lit outdoors scene will automatically become darlky atmospheric by adding a wolf howling & some graveyard music, but think about it. Darken the gfx accordingly, add some triggers- I mean like, when you go under a tree make a bats fluttering sound & add some gfx to go with it- if your clever with this you'll have the player jumping out his/her seat. It's effects like this which engage the player into your world


I hope that people get something out of this article or the example file, if not- oh well, can't say I didn't try.
Muhahaha