PART 01 · THE PROBLEM
The Craft & Engineering Challenge
Flooded underground cathedrals lose spatial depth quickly when every wall shares the same wet basalt reflectance. Early playtesters either lost sight of ledges in dark chambers or felt pulled out of the world when we added floating UI waypoints.
PART 02 · IMPLEMENTATION
How We Built & Tuned It
We split lantern illumination into a crisp near-field grazing rim pass and a low-cost half-resolution volumetric spore scatter pass. Carved stone reliefs catch jade grazing angles only when the player swings or raises the lantern, guiding traversal naturally.
PART 03 · PLAYER WAVE TAKEAWAY
What Playtesters Changed
In internal Wave 01 playtests, players navigated the Sunken Cistern without opening a map once, while keeping a ~6.4 ms lighting budget at 1440p.