Intelligent lighting for a better gaming experience

Abstract

Lighting assumes many aesthetic and communicative functions in game environments that affect attention, immersion, visibility, and emotions. Game environments are dynamic and highly unpredictable; lighting such experiences to achieve desired visual goals is a very challenging problem. Current lighting methods rely on static manual techniques, which require designers to anticipate and account for all possible situations and user actions. Alternatively, we have developed ELE (Expressive Lighting Engine) -an intelligent lighting system that automatically sets and adjusts scene lighting in real-time to achieve desired aesthetic and communicative goals. In this paper, we discuss ELE and its utility in dynamically manipulating the lighting in a scene to direct attention, stimulate tension, and maintain visual continuity. ELE has been integrated within Unreal Tournament 2003. The videos shown at [14] shows a demonstration of a first person shooter game developed using the Unreal 2.0 engine, where ELE was configured to dynamically stimulate tension, while maintaining other visual goals.

Inducing Emotional Response in Interactive Media: A Pilot Study

“…In the gaming industry, the importance of lighting on the game experience is well understood [4]. Drawing on principles of cinematography lighting can be used to set mood and atmosphere, which are critical for inducing emotional engagement [3].…”

“…The effect was added in conjunction with the heart beat sound to convey to the user a sense of danger, with the intention of stimulating the flight or fight response. The video effects are all implemented using Unity Standard Assets 3 , whereas the ambient audio effects are implemented using an asset called Interactive Audio: Enchanted Forest 4 , which is purchased on the Unity Asset Store.…”

Gaming after Dark

“…Also the visual composition that results from style includes light placement, colors, camera angles, field of view, movement, textures and many more aesthetic features. In games, such art decisions have strong impact on how the game environment is perceived by the players [12]. If the style is well defined and seamlessly pursued throughout the whole work, it helps a lot in experiencing a believable and authentic environment.…”

Projecting tension in virtual environments through lighting

“…As the figure shows, visibility was well balanced with the contrast effect, as contrast increases or decreases in time. For the second prototy pe, the temporal dynamic expressive lighting engine was integrated with the Unreal Tournament Engine [19]. An interface was added to enable developers to select the desired patterns of li ghting variation.…”

“…An interactive demo of this sy stem was presented within the Interactivity venue of Computer Human Interaction Conference 2005 [19]. Several people play ed the demo after the author explained the premise of the game .…”