Stage Designer - Beta

Stage Designer is a builder-like game, where the player can build and animate their own concert or festival stage. In it's current form, it supports a multitude of functions and animation features, as well as many QOL features that help the player easily build their stage. In-built YouTube importer, so that you can easily download your favorite song and get started!

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Campaign Mode

Campaign mode is a mission based mode, where the user is limited by a budget. The user must satisfy band requests ("Use 3 purple spot lights", "Enable the crowd simulation") to gain a larger budget, which allows a larger variety of lighting elements to be used. Specifics for each Campaign Mission and what levels entail can be found in the source code on GitHub (CampaignController.cs and BudgetController.cs).

Sandbox Mode

Sandbox mode allows the player to operate without a budget. There are no missions, and the user has full creativity over what they want to do. Get creative, design a stage and show your friends!

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Getting Started and Controls

To start creating your own festival stage, simply choose between campain/sandbox mode, upload/select a song and a stage, and you're good to go! Please note that it is currently possible to select a stage and proceed to animation *without* uploading a song. Although it is possible to later upload a song, I strongly recommend uploading a file/using the YouTube importer, or selecting the inbuilt STS9 or Pretty Lights song presets before proceeding to animation. You will not be able to use the YouTube importer or select from the preset options at a later time, without restarting from the main menu.

To move the camera -  you can use 'alt+mouse movement' to zoom, 'shift+mouse movement' to rotate, and the 'middle mouse button + mouse movement' to pan the camera. You can also press 'f' to zoom to the selected object, if you have one selected.

Use the buttons on the upper left to pause the game (and control graphics/crowd settings), spawn items in, control the music and select a stage. You can change music and stage at any time without losing your progress. 

To select a light, simply click on it. To clear your selection, press 'c'. To delete a light, select it and press 'Backspace'. Detailed instrutions on all the features and functionality are below.

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Animation and Building

To animate your lights, simply spawn any item in and select it by clicking on it. You will see a movement gizmo on top of the light, and three buttons will appear in the upper right: Animation, Add Keyframe, and Mirror.

• Animation
  • Clicking this button will open the animation panel. Here you can control the light color, intensity and strobe rate. For lights that use multiple light sources (3 light, discoball, spotlight, etc.) you can click "Next Light" to switch between which light source you are editing. 
    
  • Clicking 'Add Keyframe' will add a keyframe at the current point in the timeline slider, for the selected light. 
    
    • The Keyfarme List can be seen on the right side of the Animation Menu, and can be used to jump between or delete keyframes. It lists the keyframe time, it's corresponding light source, and the type of keyframe (Location, Rotation, Color, Intensity, Multiple).
    • When adding keyframes, they will appear on top of the Timeline as clickable elements - click these to easily jump between keyframes without having to open the Animation Menu
• Add Keyframe
  
  • Clicking this will add a keyframe for the selected light at the current timeline slider point. These keyframes will also appear in the Keyframe List in the Animation Men
• Mirror
  • Mirror will mirror the currently selected light horizontally along the stage. It is important to note that while Mirror is very helpful for building the lights, it currently does *not* copy over light information (keyframes, color, strobe rates, etc.). You will have to manually copy over keyframe information if you want the mirrored light to match the animation of the original light

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The Timeline

The timeline is a critical part of Stage Designer. Here is where you can scroll through the music, see your animation in action and control where to put keyframes. 

When you first choose/upload a song, it will show the timeline at the bottom, with the current time and the total length of the song (in seconds). You can input exact times in the field, or simply drag the handle to control the current time. 

When adding keyframes, they will appear on top of the timeline as clickable keyframes - click these to easily jump between keyframes without having to open the Animation Menu

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 Bonus Features

• Youtube Audio Importer
  • One of the best parts of StageDesigner the YouTube Audio Importer.
  • When creating a new Stage Design, you can choose from 4 options
    • mp3 upload
    • YouTube import
    • STS9 - Haze (Live, Red Rocks, 2023)
    • Pretty Lights - Savages (Live, St. Augustine, 2024)
  • To import any song from YouTube, simply paste the YouTube link to the song and click the "Download" Button. 
  • Please be patient with the download, the screen will lag during download.
  • Downloaded files can be found at "%AppData%/LocalLow/mDot2Games/StageDesigner/DownloadedAudio"
• Saving and Loading
  
  • Saving
    
    • To 'Save' your Stage, go to the Pause menu and hit 'Save'. It will first open a menu, and you can choose where to save your file. This file can be loaded in at any point to load your Stage, and can also be used to change the background of the main menu to a custom stage animation.
    • After saving your Stage as a file, you will see a camera animation. This camera animation will show you what your stage is like from the beginning, and will bring a whole new perspective to your show! Keep an eye out for sneaky concert-goers trying to get backstage...
  • Loading
    • To load a stage, simply hit the 'Load' button in the Pause menu and select the file that you want to load. Certain things may not load properly, and you can check the logs to see the exact issue. The save files are editble in JSON, and are fairly easy to read and fix manually, should there be any issues. 
    • This functionality will be safer and more secure in future versions.
• Crowd Simulation (Pause Menu -> Settings)
  • Click the 'Crowd' button in the Settings Menu to toggle the crowd on and off.
  • The crowd is spawned in differently each time, so if you get a crowd simulation that you don't like - toggle it on/off again, until you get one that works! This may impact performance, depending on the amount of crowd members created (this will be user-editable in the future).
• Graphics Settings (Pause Menu -> Settings)
  • Bloom -  Effects lots of light rays.
  • Fog - Fog is volumetric and effects light rays.
  • Film Grain -  Standard film grain applied to the camera
  • Motion Blur -  Standard motion blur.
  • Color Enhancements -  This will effect the reflectivity of lights, and generally makes lights more saturated and brighter on surfaces. 
• Colorblind Simulator (Pause Menu -> Settings)
  • Stage Designer includes a colorblind filter. This filter mimics the colorblindness of Tritanopia, so that when designing your stage, you can see how it might look to someone who is colorblind. All types of colorblindness will be supported in future versions.
• Grid Snapping
  
  • When placing and moving items, they adhere to a grid snapping system. Although not visible or editble (yet) by the player, this system (especially when used with the Mirror tool) will assist you in placing lights symmetrically and in a more ordered fashion. It is always on, and requires no user-interaction to work behind the scenes.

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Disclaimers

I do not own or claim ownership of any music used or any uploads from users. All rights belong to their respective owners. Some models are designed by other artists, all of which are free to use. All credits also visible on credits screen.