Lighting and VFX

Directional Light Changes: The directional light is reduced to 0.5 lux, the color is set to a blue tint, the temperature is set way down, atmospheric sun light is on, and the size of the light is significantly increased. These changes help immerse the player in a tense, dark atmosphere. The atmospheric sun light and the directional light size increase help make the scene look like a dark night with a full moon.

Exponential Height Fog changes: The fog density is turned up to 0.5 and the location is set much closer to the ground.

Skylight changes: color set to slight blue tint.

Post Process: Saturation set to 1.1, contrast set to 1.2, gamma set to 0.8. Min and Max EV set to -0.5. Path tracing turned off because it caused framerate issues.

Rain: made from fountain Niagara effect. Spawn rate set to 1000, Lifetime set to 1.75 max, velocity set to speed of 1. Drag set to 0.5 to emulate slight wind. I had to reduce the spawn size by a factor of 5 from the video because the original heavy rain was far too obnoxious. There is also constant rain ambience emitted by the Niagara system. The rain ambience is there specifically to break the silence while keeping the illusion of it being a quiet night. The player character is in part under the cover of the storm.

Lightning: I did this on my own. I did not use a video. The lightning uses a directional light component. It is normally set to invisible, but in between every 10 to 30 seconds, it will set the light intensity to 2000 for a duration of 0.01 seconds, repeated about three times. Thunder noise is played at location between 0.5 to 1 seconds after the lightning strike. For now, there appears to be some artifacting on moving items during the lightning strike. I believe this has something to do with the post-processing affecting the lightning.

Spot lights: the spot lights are good for the visibility of the player, but also cause the enemy to see the player clearer. Enemy bar is filled twice as fast under the cover of light.