I decided to take a break from the intensity of creating the combat system today and instead focused on the artistic elements of the game. The setting and characters that I have designed are deeply entwined with my core game mechanics and so it is essential that I set the right tone in-game. A great first step when trying to convey a certain vibe to the player is the addition of appropriate music and so that is where I began. I downloaded an RPG music pack from the Unity store and imported it into the game. I then listened to each of the songs and selected some which had a dark enough sound to be included. I could have just picked the most sombre sounding one and dropped it into the scene as a placeholder but having to listen to that one track over and over would have driven me crazy. Instead, I wrote a short script which stores a playlist of songs and randomly selects one to play when the level first loads or once an existing song ends. I then created a game object, added this script to it along with an audio source component and filled its song list with the moodiest tracks I had. The songs I picked where still too high-fantasy rather than gothic horror so I dropped the pitch on the audio source component down to 0.3, making everything sound much more ominous.
Music Player Script:
Once this was done I decided to do some work on the visual side of things. I scoured the Unity asset store and imported any free 3D fantasy or horror assets I could to give myself as many resources as possible to play with. I found a good number of human and monster models which I think will work as my characters and enemies. I also found a variety of prefabs such as buildings, plants, weapons and other props to populate the game world. I lay down a grass material on the ground and placed a few wooden houses and stone walls just to give my battle scene a thematic look rather than having it just be grey boxes. This is of course temporary and I will design proper levels later on down the line. The addition of these elements now is just to give the scene a little bit of a vibe.
I then moved on to lighting. I greatly lowered the angle of the directional light in the scene to cast some long shadows and darken everything. I was trying to create the impression that it is night time and that the light in the scene is being cast by a full moon. After some trail and error in the project's lighting settings I ran into a problem. The base sky-box was not able to do what I wanted, as pulling the sun down either leaves you with sunset or pitch blackness and a pleasant blue sky regardless. I went back to the asset store and imported a pack of sky boxes. After some experimentation, I settled on a cloudy night sky-box and added it to the scene. To simulate dim moonlight I gave the directional light a severe angle and reduced its intensity. I also added fog to the scene which shrouds things further away from the camera in darkness, adding an air of mystery. To counteract the dim lighting and ensure I still had good visibility, I added orange point lights attached to candle props near the doorways of buildings, making them into cosy refuges from the darkness outside.
Here is a video of all of this in action:
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