Time for action — using lights and shadow casters

Lighting and shadow engines are normally used in 3D games to add realism to the scene, but rarely they are also used in 2D games to improve visuals as well.

1. 1. On the LevelLights layer, create a Light object called WhiteLight and accept the default image it comes with. Set its Shadow filter property to WebBlack and its Shadow opacity to 60%.

2. 2. Place the object in your layout where you would like light to come in from:

   

3. 3. Now on the ShadowCasters layer, create a Sprite called ShadowMask and fill it with Black. Give this object the Collisions mode None and check the box for Destroy on Startup before adding the Shadowcaster behavior to it and setting Shadow depth to 1 and the shadow Collision Mask to Bounding Box.

4. 4. Now switch over to the Game events, and in the Startup group add sub-events For each Ground object and For each CrateBox object to the main Start of layout event.

5. 5. For the first sub-event, add actions to create the ShadowMask object...