Difference between revisions of "Furniture, Traps, and Lighting"

Be sure you have "Selection Only" checked.  Note that this feature doesn't work with mulitple selections.

Another of the fun ones, let's put a trap in the cell. Traps are [[Activator]]s, so navigate to that section in your Object Window. <i>( Activators>Dungeons>Caves>Traps/Triggers)</i>

Drag out the following items from the trap list, and the third from the Actors>Creatures list. (I'll explain why momentarily)

I've chosen the narrow entrance to the large room as the choke point for my trap, but place yours whereever you think it will be most effective.

North is always the top of your screen when you hit the "T" hotkey.  There is an exception, however.

CS include a special marker called "NorthMarker", which forces North in the direction it is pointed.

This marker is used to keep cardinal directions consistent from cell to cell.

[[Image:tut_img_13.jpg|thumb|right|Trap Setup with Havok collision (F4) toggled on]]

Now, position your tripwire and scale it to fit.  Note that some players will run through a cell, and others will walk or sneak - Setting up a trap that will get the best of players takes some luck, skill, and a lot of testing.  Plan to experiment with this for a while.

One mace is good, but won't two be better?  Use "Ctrl+D" to duplicate your mace, and position the second where you'd like it.  Now's the time to set the trap up.  First, double-click the maces and tripwire and check "Persistent Reference" in the box that pops up.  Now, double click the tripwire again.  Select the "Enable Parent" tab, and press the button labeled "Select Reference in Render Window".  Notice the crosshair cursor that now appears in the [[Render Window]]?  Move it over one of the maces and click.  Click "OK", and now double click on the mace you just selected, and do the same thing again, this time selecting the second mace with your crosshair cursor.

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What we just did is called a "Daisy-Chain". This means that when the tripwire is triggered, it will also trigger it's parent (the first mace), which will in turn trigger it's parent (the second mace) This means that we can theoretically trigger an unlimited number of maces from a single trigger.

Now for a final touch - Select you skeleton and turn on havok simulation.  His collapsed bones are now a tiny visual clue to the player that there may be danger about. Remember that you can use ctrl+alt to scatter the bones in a believable pattern.

then it will be tripped when you load the cell. Remember to use F4 to check for this.

Lighting is one of the most difficult parts of level design, due in no small part to how easy it is to get wrong. Luckily, the CS ships with a pallete of pre-tuned colors for cave sets. Expand the Lights section and limit yourself to lights beginning with the prefix "Cave".

However; before we start placing lights, let's place light "motivators". "Motivator" is a term for any world object that logically should cast light. For instance, the blue dome attached to CDoor01 is designed to give the appearance of sky behind the door, making it a motivator for daylight. Likewise, torches are a motivator for fire lighting.

Position the beam inside one of the shafts.  You may need to scale it to fit.  Use <b>"ctrl+D"</b> to duplicate this and place it in the other shaft. For maximum visual appeal, position the objects so that they terminate in the room at different heights.

Let's go ahead and place lights for these two areas. Drag these lights out and place them near the specified objects. Remember that "<b>A</b>" toggles lighting preview, and "<b>M</b>" will toggle rendering of special markers, such as lightbulbs, making it easier to preview what the scene will look like in-game.

In terms of pure logic, this is how our dungeon <i>should</i> be lit, since there are no other motivators for light in the cell. This, however, isn't the case. We can (and should) place more motivators, such as candles and torches, but we'll also have to rely on "Hollywood Lights", or un-motivated lights, to light the dungeon in a way that's visually appealing and useful to gameplay.

I'll also use Wisp Stalks, a special indoor mushroom you can find under flora, and CaveGloShroom lights. Spend some time positioning these where they make sense and help lead the player through the dungeon.

Use "L" to preview this radius in the render window. Be cautious and avoid overlaps where possible.

Now that we have a first pass of motivated lights, let's light up any doorways, combat areas, or points of interest that have no light yet. Try to use a mix of warm and cool colors to keep the player's interest and, as always, guide them through the dungeon.

<br>[[Image:tut_img_14.jpg]]<br>