Len Medina
Level Design
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Creating Tension Curves with Lighting and Color
Creating tension is critical to the level The goal of my thesis was to create an
use, developers can enhance a multitude Creation Kit Engine that would ultimately
designer’s tool kit because through its
of elements such as: narrative, player
choice, mood/atmosphere, and task
difficulty. Mood/atmosphere encompasses
lighting and color, and working with these
elements keeps players in an optimal flow
to in turn create tension. This optimal flow
is where tension curves come from. A
tension curve can be thought of as similar
to the experience of a rollercoaster. If
tension stays too boring or too stressful
for too long, players will want to quit the
experience.
The challenge presented is that if one of
these elements is done poorly, it can be a
detriment to the tension curve as a whole.
Tension must be released and built up in
a game to keep players engaged. This
project was important to me because my
love of creating immersive and memorable
experiences has consistently been a vital
goal within my design process.
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LEVEL DESIGN
artifact within Bethesda’s Skyrim via the
demonstrate the mastery of using lighting
and color to create a desired tension level.
In my research, I learned the multitude
of different characteristics needed to
manipulate light and color such as
color, contrast, direction, key, and value.
Additionally, I learned how each of these
characteristics within both color and light
influence tension itself.
The pipeline of the entire process involved
creating a predicted tension curve based
off of my research and asking playtesters
to rate their tension experience within
each of the rooms I created in the artifact.
By doing so, learned that I could help
players to experience very similar levels to
the levels I predicted by fine tuning each
characteristic of lighting and color. The full
research and execution involved with my
thesis took approximately 300 hours over
the span of 12 months.