Dynamic (shrink & grow) Gameplay area

Development Programming & Scripting Blueprint
1

I am a beginner…

I want to create a gameplay area that can be shrunk and grown. Outside of the gameplay area I want the illumination down low and gloomy and inside the gameplay area nice and pretty.
How would I go about achieving this? The only method I can think to achieve a dynamic gameplay area, is to surround the player with blocking volumes that could be moved out to increase the gameplay area or moved inwards to reduce the gameplay area. This feels like a bad way to go about this…(?). As far as lighting, I assume I would just do this in the Camera Post Processing?

Any ideas or pointers would be greatly appreciated.

2

Hello,

If your play zone is a box, you could have a PostProcessingVolume that and grows/shrinks. Players outside the volume could have some special effects applied.
If your play zone is a sphere, you could use a sphere collision volume that affects the post process settings of the player camera, or you can achieve the same results with calculating the distance between the center of the play zone and the player, applying the camera effects only if the distance is greater than the play zone radius.

Regarding your other questions, exactly what functionality do you want to achieve?