The A.D.V. Update 5.7.2021- Lighting Tweaks

I've added lighting in the overworld area for a stark, shaded appearance! I'm simply using stationary "point lights", and scaling them to various different sizes to fit the many corridors of the game.

"Top 'o the mornin' to ya, jerk!"

According to the rival you meet on the beach at the very beginning, The A.D.V. is set during the wee hours of the morning, particularly 5:00-6:00 A.M. I decided to commit to that little quote by make the multiply layer a dark turquoise to imply muted lighting from the sunrise. However, it makes the lighting far less stark than a pure black multiply layer, shown below (From about 15 minutes prior).

This seems to give the game a more night-like appearance. Regardless, the lighting technique I'm making use of is heavily inspired by "Vertex painting", a kind of shading technique used during the PS1-2 era before deferred rendering (A type of renderer enabling dynamic shadows) was widespread, more on that later.

The lighting in the dungeon isn't as complete as the Overworld at the moment, but I've been altering its layout to be more linear and make sense to the player, because a level with a bunch of hallways that go nowhere isn't fun to play. Two of the staircases also work now;

The Spyro games on PS1 use vertex painting on pretty much every piece of level geometry, and they're my personal favorite example of the technique! I'm not far enough into this game yet to supply a video of me showcasing the vertex painting in the "Haunted Towers" level here, but given the chance, I absolutely would, since this game is stunning.

To close out this post, here's one of the many beautiful vertex-painted skydomes from the Spyro series. Have a great weekend!