The very first “dungeon” that the Gray Mage, Lucius, enters in Last Dream II is called the “Moros Ruins”. We had nearly finished this dungeon but realized we couldn’t really get the right feeling – it was supposed to be dank and dark but that simply wasn’t coming across.
We started with adding moss to age the stone tiles, but then for realism and immersion decided we needed some small puddles of water (with dripping animations) to explain the ubiquitous moss.
Maybe it was ‘dank’ now, but still not dark yet. There was no foreboding or threatening feeling in the dungeon. It lacked mystery.
To complete the effect, we needed uneven lighting with flickering torches. We developed the necessary animated torch artwork and then spent a few days attempting to generate a lighting engine using JavaScript Sprite masking; however, we found that was far too slow and decided instead to use built-in gradient fill tools in PIXI JavaScript.
We really wanted for there to be some really dark areas that would add mystery to the contents of the dungeon. For that to be possible, we would need the player to carry the torch around the dungeon, so we modified Lucius’ walking/running sprite so that he now carried a torch in one hand throughout the dungeon. This allowed dark areas to be lit when Lucius approaches the area.
You can see the final result in the image at the top of the post. We hope you like it!
Thanks!
-Andrew, Josh, Seth, Mark, and Chris
P.S. Thanks to our top patrons for your support:
Nathan Nyein
Kim Walker
Tyler Copp
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