In my last post I have created a base Blueprint to make lamps in my game called BP_BaseLamp. With this base lamp I have a basic light system and now I need to add some features which will be useful to improve the game ambient.
I need to add mainly two things:
- Something to make sound ambient, like an electric hum.
- Something to make light alterations with intensity variations to represent malfunctional lamps.
For the sound ambient I have added a sound component that is activable through a public Boolean variable. It’s part of the base lamp Blueprint so I can stablish different sound ambient for each derived child lamp Blueprint with a predefined sound. In addition, I will be able to stablish a different sound from the predefined one in every lamp instance.
For the light alterations I have made:
- 4 different animations to change the light intensity variable using Timelines.
- With every alteration play a sparks sound. Every sound has the same duration than the alteration.
- An array of points where to spawn a Niagara particle system to throw sparks when an alteration starts.
- A sound component to make an electric noise ambient sound.
All these features are part of the main BP_BaseLamp and I can customize and configure what sparks can throw changing the Niagara System through creating child Blueprints derived from the main BP_BaseLamp or changing its configuration on every lamp in the game.
In addition, I made some Boolean variables to configure if I want to make a malfunctional lamp, if it will throw sparks and if I want them to make noise.
This is the options panel of my lamp Blueprint:
This video on Youtube shows the result of these new features: Youtube - Lamp Malfunctions - Features overview
I tested the sparks throw with normal and Lumen lighting. It's interesting how Lumen illuminates the scene with the sparks. You can see it on Youtube here: Youtube - Lamp Malfunctions - Normal vs Lumen lighting
Next will be the buttons Blueprints.
