Flashlight for Survival Horror Game

TheActualGamer

Whats going on everyone! Thanks for taking the time to read this and help me out

Im working on a survival horror game using four directional movements and graphics like Pokemon for the gameboy lol (good times)

Anywho, i want the hero to carry a flashlight which runs on a battery that quickly runs out and has the ability to turn on and off. If he shines it on a monster, the monster will be temporarily disabled like in Slenderman. I can make the images with illustrator so if i need to make something just let me know my question for yall is:

1) what rules do i put in place to make a battery life meter that drains while using to empty and I can no longer use it, and have to go to a terminal to charge it back up again. (hardest question lol)

2) have it effect an enemy to disable him so to speak,

3) make my map dimmer so that everything is barely visible unless i shine the light on it.

Thanks guys! Have an awesome day!

tatiang

1. Google gamesalad health bar. There are many tutorials and videos for doing this.
2. It depends. Do you want the flashlight to shine in a direction or over a location or within a certain radius of the hero, or something else?
3. Either cover it with another actor with self.color.Alpha (opacity) set to something high like 0.8 or change every actor's self.color.Alpha to something low. Also Google gamesalad flashlight as this effect has been done before.

TheActualGamer

Thanks for the reply, if you could provide me with links id appreciate the time i havent looked up the healthbar thing to much but i couldnt find anything on the flashlight subject. I basically want the flashlight to cone out in the direction the character is facing (up down left right). I hope this shines more light, if not ill try to explain it better

Barney style for me please

tatiang

I wasn't giving you general advice about searching... I was giving you the exact search terms I would use (and which I confirmed contain useful posts and videos). I honestly don't know which specific URL is going to work best for you so I'd just say, try one until you find the one that makes the most sense.

The flashlight tutorials and videos are mostly going to be about a circular area but it sounds like for your purposes you'll want to spawn an actor that is more rectangular/conical in a direction from the hero and then check enemy actors for collision with that light actor.

TheActualGamer

Yes thats exactly the effect im looking for!

jamie_c

I have a tutorial below that shows one way to make a spotlight effect (among other things), I'm sure you could adapt it to your needs of a flashlight effect instead.

tatiang

I just remembered I have a video that explains how to make a health bar. It's titled "#13.7 Creating a Health Meter" and can be found at the Tutorials link in my signature.

TheActualGamer

@jamie_c‌ Hey Jamie! I've actually watched some of your videos on youtube this is cool I'm star struck LOL any who, nice video, but even after going to your sight and downloading the files, I'm still at a loss how you created that spotlight image and the night vision. Think you could walk me through that it'd be most helpful.

jamie_c

@TheActualGamer, thanks for the kind words. I'm glad you found my tutorials useful so far.

That one has been posted a long time I think I may need to check it out and refresh my own memory, lol. But I know the general idea of the spotlight was to make a large black image that covers most of the screen, with a hole 'cut out' of it that exposes what is underneath. You would then need to constrain that black cover image to your player to simulate the flashlight effect.

I used an effect just like that to create the night-time portion of my game 'doodle bug jump jump', it worked out pretty well.