Creating the Lighting for Resistance: Fall of Man

Page 6

 

Obviously light mapping won't work on an object that's going to be moving. Well, actually it could work, but it would look really screwy because the object would be moving, but the lighting wouldn't be changing. So for those objects, including the characters, other techniques are used to sample the existing lighting in the scene and apply it to these dynamic objects. The trick here is to get the lighting of the static environment to match up with the lighting of the dynamic objects.

So there are actually a number of different types of lighting going on at the same time: the light mapping that you see in these images on the static environment, dynamic lights that can be moved or destroyed, spatial lighting to light the moveable objects and characters, reflective lighting so the shiny objects have highlights, and the player's flashlight. When everything's working together properly, it should look like it all belongs together.

 

Spooky cave. The flashlight looks great in areas like this.

 

Chimeran architecture starts to show up more often as you make your way through.

Designer: Ken Strickland

Environment Artists: Kory Hagney, Tom Breeden. Yancy Young added shrub and rock goodness.

Kory said "These levels were my true babies of Resistance. There was a point where we thought that they might be cut. I insisted that I could finish them and focused on reducing assets, and worked closely with gameplay to get some creepy enemy placements set up. This refinement went on until the very end, or at least until the cut-off for lighting. This level almost didn't make it because it was designed specifically around a hardware element which was cut.

There was a whole lot of reworking in the vertical cable area to allow the player to both walk on the massive cables, and not change their placement.

Platforms, platforms, platforms….It all worked out though!!"

 

More machinery.

 

Atmospheric fog plays a big roll in lighting as well. It's used to make distance more obvious, and creates silhouettes.

 

Massive cables run throughout this level.

 

Early concept sketch by Brian Yam.

 

Another shot showing the importance of atmospheric fog.