Bringing your scene to life

Bringing Your Scene to Life

In the previous chapter, you learned how to create your own scene – edit terrain, build structures, and add vegetation, animals, and characters.

Now we will “bring the scene to life”: we will add the right atmosphere using world settings, lights, music, and sounds.

Scene settings

Many things that affect the atmosphere of your game are not set directly in the scene, but in Scenario Settings. Open it using the button in the Editor’s top bar.

You will find many options in the settings. Some are advanced and will have their own chapter. Here, we will explain only the ones that help the most when “bringing the scene to life”.

In World Settings, you can choose how the scene looks and feels:

• Game time – determines what time you start in the game (e.g., 08:00 morning, 18:00 evening, 22:00 night).
• Time scale – tells how fast time passes in the scene. You can set one in-game day to last a few minutes, or stop time completely (slider all the way left).
• Weather – choose whether it will be sunny, foggy, rainy, a snowstorm, and more.
• Global ambient sound – sets the scene’s base ambience (e.g., forest, city, sea).

The Gameplay section is also important. To start with, these options are useful to know:

• Enable punch – determines what the character does when you press the left mouse button. If disabled (default), the character only waves. If enabled, the character punches (useful for games where the player breaks objects).
• World saving – for school projects, we recommend keeping this option disabled.

In the Editor section, you will find one more useful option: Time.

This affects how the scene looks directly in the Editor (e.g., day / night), but it does not change the time settings during gameplay. This is useful when you are creating a night scene and want to see how lighting will look while you build.

Light

Light has a huge impact on how your scene feels. You can use it to create a cozy village, a spooky forest, or a mysterious cave.

You can create light in a scene in two main ways:

• using glowing objects (torches, lamps, glowing crystals),
• using Game Logic – Light.

The first option is the simplest – you add an object that already emits light.

The second option is to use Game Logic – Light. You can find it in the list of Basic Game Logics after clicking the corresponding button in the top bar.

In this game logic, you can set:

• Radius – how far the light reaches.
• Intensity – how strong the light is (how much it “brightens” the area).

The Light game logic is best used where you want more precise control – for example in a cave, a room, or near an important object.

Music and sound

Music and sounds can turn even a simple scene into a strong experience. The same village can feel calm, mysterious, or dangerous – just depending on what you hear.

You can start by setting the Global ambient sound in Scenario Settings – for example forest, city, or sea sounds.

If you want to add a specific sound (for example a waterfall roar or a creaking door), use the Sound Effect game logic.

The steps are usually similar:

• place the Sound Effect game logic into the scene,
• in its settings, click Edit and choose a sound from the list,
• you can preview it using the small triangle next to the name,
• set the Audible distance – how far from the object you can hear the sound.

You can add music in the same way, but using a different game logic type – Music Preset.

After placing a Music Preset into the scene:

• check Default – this means the music will be used automatically in the scene,
• we also recommend checking Ignore weather so the music plays regardless of the selected weather,
• use the + button to add one or more tracks, and for each one click Edit to choose the specific music.