How I Made #1 Fading Light

Hey there, Gamers and Game Makers!

Welcome to a new series instalment to the blog called, "How I Made" in which I will talk a little about how I made certain aspects of some of my previous games.

To kick off the series, I'll be talking about how I made, Fading Light.

For those of you unfamiliar with the game, Fading Light was part of a series of short horror games I made at Eyesodic Games. The game sees you lost in a deep, dark cave, in search of a way out.

The Game starts off with you in an open area of the cave after you just fell from an upper section of the cave. You soon notice the ​skeletal remains of someone who has come before you and didn't fair so well. You can interact with the remains and some notes that are next to it.

Making the remains interactive is done by adding an invisible collider over the remains that runs a scripts that when pressed on, ​displays some spoken text from the player.

The notes are handled in almost the same way. The note objects seen in the game, when pressed on run a scripts that displays an texture canvas on screen and I ten overlay the desired text in a handwritten font to give the impression of a note left by someone in the cave.

The flickering light of your lantern is done by having a single point light set as a child of the player object and then through a script, I create a variation in light color and set a flicker interval that I can tweak.

It's not long until you realize you are not alone in the depths of the cave. To introduce the player to the enemy, I wanted a section where you get a glimpse at the monster where you don't see much but the monster is also no threat at this point. I do this by leading the player down a long narrow section of the cave and as you come to the end, I disable the movement for just a moment and spawn the monster at an invisible cube and he pathfinds just out of sight and disappears. This particular monster is not running the same AI script as the others will so, he won't attack the player. 

The other monsters spawn at random through out the level. The is done again using invisible cubes running a script that spawns the selected objects at random time ​intervals and then destroys them after a set amount of time.

Now, there's a section where in order to progress the story, there needs to be a cave in and this only occurs when you interact with a second set of remains. So, this is handled by having a variable checking to see if the player has interacted with that particular object and once you do the variable updates and next time you pass through that variable check, the cave in sfx is triggered and the way forward in unlocked.

Just when you've gotten used to your trusty lantern and think you've found a way out, I plunge you into complete darkness. So how do I handle when I take away your source of light? Much like the way I check for the cave in above. There is a variable checking if the player has interacted with the pick axe and as soon as you interact with it, that variable updates and the point light object is disabled on the player object.

And finally, that ending scene. Again, much like everything so far, the final event in the game is handled through a simple variable check. As you stumble through the darkness in search of a new light source, the game is checking to see if you've interacted with the firewood. As soon as the player lights that firewood, the variable updates and the player movement is limited and using more invisible cubes, I spawn in multiple monsters that converge on the player ending the players life and with that the game.

So, as you can see, there's nothing too complicated involved in the making of Fading Light but it all comes together to make a nice short polished game. I hope you've enjoyed the first of this new series in which I'll talk about how I made some of my previous games. If you'd like to see me explain something in more detail, please feel free to comment or get in touch. If you want to check out Fading Light, you can find more information and links to download it for free here.

​Until next time!