I have been getting feedback about my game (Pong Arcade), and someone mentioned that the building was “all over the place”, and should have some style (as in realistic, low-poly, etc.); however, I am having trouble understanding exactly what this means or how to implement it. I know that I want my game to feel like an old-school arcade, but I do not know if this relates to “style”. What I don’t want is for my game to, in the process of conforming to a style, become indistinguishable from a generic “low-poly” (or other) game.
It seems to me that having a style means having unity in some way between the different aspects of the building, so I tried changing some materials and colors to conform to a more specific palette, as well as adding/removing neon strips to certain areas, but I do not know if this helped with the issue.
Does anyone have any comments on if the building is not “stylized” enough, or if it is fine the way it is? Referring to specific inadequacies and how to improve them would be helpful. Here are some images for reference:
What do you mean by lighting? Do you mean add physical lights to the building? Or work on the existing neon lights? Or do you mean tweak the properties in the Lighting service?
I tweaked some of the atmosphere and lighting properties, and changed some of the colors of the lights and signs. I think it looks a bit better, but I don’t know if it needs more major changes…
Create the atmosphere of your arcade place dark and lighty.
Transform your place to be incredibly dark, this means enable Shadows and apply Technology to Future in Lighting properties.
As for some things, add a lighting and changes neon to 0,0,0 and the color back to the actual one previously. This would create the element of PAC-MAN-like of games where pixels move around such as the snake in your arcade you’ve displayed in one of the images.
Transform text to actual model, if you can’t you can hit me up and I can make you one real quick or even teach you how to.
Also, since there will be darkness, add low-strength lighting sources that come out of the neon objects such as the snake, the text. Also if you’re interested, I can manually help you make it in case you’d require some help. Let me know if I’ve helped or you need some manual help with that.
I haven’t yet tried implementing the Future technology, I will try that and see how it works. It seems that making the arcade dark and contrasting it with lights could help it look better.
Do you mean adding lights that turn on and off with the game screens? That would help the lighting feel more alive/dynamic, I will try that too.
I also think this will make the game look better, I can try a 3D text plugin.
I tried some of the things you mentioned in the small room, I think it makes it look more vibrant. I made the ambient darker, added some light sources, and made the 2D text into 3D text (can’t really do that to the floor text).
This was the expected result to be honest, I was not expecting to lack more information that I provided.
In any case, enter Lighting and insert the values shown in the image as accurately as possible, afterward as bonus you can apply bloom for neon to be brighter and depthoffield for distant blurriness.
I see, you meant turn down the ambient and add ceiling lights as the light-source. I added more lights, so I can turn down the ambient a little more, but the problem with 0, 0, 0 ambient is that areas that are hard to light will be completely dark.
For other lighting effects, I already have bloom, depth-of-field, sun rays, color correction being used (but thanks for the suggestion).
