The beginnings of a T2D particle effects content pack?
by Jon Frisby · 03/06/2006 (3:13 pm) · 12 comments
My current game project is going to require litterally several DOZEN distinct particle effects. To that end I've been using the particle effects editor and coming up with all sorts of particle effects. Many of them may be more appropriate for other kinds of games, so I may have the beginnings of a content pack on my hands!
I only have a couple basic effects here, but many useful variations on each. Let's start with jets of gas.
Wouldn't a jet of electric plasma be handy?
Especially one that could be rotated easily?
What about a jet of frost?
Need one that's longer?
What about a jet of fire?
And a longer one?
What about toxic gas?
How about radioactive gas?
That's all well and good, but flamethrowers and attack spells only take you so far. What about particle effects you can use to indicate status modifiers on your character?
I'm not totally sure what a trail of crystals would be useful for, but it sure looks neat to me:
How about an electric/plasma glow:
And of course if your character is imbued with the power of fire, they'll need this:
But what if your character is imbued with the power of COLD instead?
Eeeeeeeeevvvvvvvvvery game needs a way to show that a character's been poisoned:
But what if your character is irradiated?
What about having a way to show that your character is dazed or confused?
But that STILL only gets you part of the way there. So here are some other nifty effects that you might find useful:
How about a fireball that looks like it's straight out of Independence Day?
Smoke for a magic genie?
And what particle effect set would be complete without stars falling everywhere?
I only have a couple basic effects here, but many useful variations on each. Let's start with jets of gas.
Wouldn't a jet of electric plasma be handy?
Especially one that could be rotated easily?What about a jet of frost?
Need one that's longer?What about a jet of fire?
And a longer one?What about toxic gas?
How about radioactive gas?
That's all well and good, but flamethrowers and attack spells only take you so far. What about particle effects you can use to indicate status modifiers on your character?
I'm not totally sure what a trail of crystals would be useful for, but it sure looks neat to me:
How about an electric/plasma glow:
And of course if your character is imbued with the power of fire, they'll need this:
But what if your character is imbued with the power of COLD instead?
Eeeeeeeeevvvvvvvvvery game needs a way to show that a character's been poisoned:
But what if your character is irradiated?
What about having a way to show that your character is dazed or confused?
But that STILL only gets you part of the way there. So here are some other nifty effects that you might find useful:
How about a fireball that looks like it's straight out of Independence Day?
Smoke for a magic genie?
And what particle effect set would be complete without stars falling everywhere?
#2
sure, it's really nice looking in action.. good stuff Jon!
03/06/2006 (4:04 pm)
this is so cool! especially "Independence Day" fireball ;)sure, it's really nice looking in action.. good stuff Jon!
#3
03/06/2006 (6:18 pm)
Very cool particle effects. I just wish TGE could pull of this kind of stuff...
#4
I've come up with some more effects. To avoid blog spam, I'll post snapshots here instead.
What do you do when your character drinks a potion and recovers some health? You use a health trail:
What about when they recover mana? You use a mana trail:
-JF
03/06/2006 (7:18 pm)
@Josh: I thought TGE had a particle-effects system as well?I've come up with some more effects. To avoid blog spam, I'll post snapshots here instead.
What do you do when your character drinks a potion and recovers some health? You use a health trail:
What about when they recover mana? You use a mana trail:
-JF
#5
Perhaps, you could make the fire curl a bit like a flame and slwoly turn to grey smoke that floats away? It'd be nice if you could get a realistic and visually intreseting fire effect for general purposes.
You might also want to try some Wind Waker-esque cartoony particles effects that have rotatiing spirals and other nonrealistic embellishments.
03/06/2006 (7:48 pm)
Most of those look pretty ordinary but the Fireball, the Toxic Gas and a few of the others look really incredible. I love the amount of depth and detail in an image that is generated prcedurally. If you could do jet bursts with that kind of quality, I might actually buy a particle effect pack like that. Perhaps, you could make the fire curl a bit like a flame and slwoly turn to grey smoke that floats away? It'd be nice if you could get a realistic and visually intreseting fire effect for general purposes.
You might also want to try some Wind Waker-esque cartoony particles effects that have rotatiing spirals and other nonrealistic embellishments.
#6
03/06/2006 (9:35 pm)
If you want to release that stuff for fun maybe, but that is nowhere near the level of anything you pay for. I could do all these effects in TGE, but I do know TGB has a much better interface and more control for it's particles, I would love to mess with it someday.
#7
Are you gonna sell them? Or just give m to the community?
03/07/2006 (4:27 am)
nice! those look great.. I'd love using those for my game..Are you gonna sell them? Or just give m to the community?
#8
03/07/2006 (6:25 am)
A lot of pics - well worth the read(Not to much to read though)! Looks very nice as well!
#9
We've needed this for a LOOOOOOONG time. Even if the particles aren't directly useful for a particular game, $15 isn't much to spend if you get a lot of different examples to build off of.
Can I suggest a two-pronged approach to this though? Since the particle editor is centered around adding and mixing emitters, IMHO it would be great to have a large library of basic effects available that you can mix and match into "complete" effects. So releasing a pack that has both a collection of complete effects such as your fireballs, but also having a large collection of emitters to plug in would be great.
I've personally found that tweaking the effects is not a problem. In fact it is fun. The hard part ends up being creating the "sprite" needed to acheive types of effects kuje good flames, or good starbursts. You know, those pesky white .png's with transparency layers and what not that when colored and put together into an effect give you good looking results.
Any pack that provides a large collection of those building block sprites to create effects with would be worth my money.
03/07/2006 (7:33 am)
Don't let Paul discourage you! ;)We've needed this for a LOOOOOOONG time. Even if the particles aren't directly useful for a particular game, $15 isn't much to spend if you get a lot of different examples to build off of.
Can I suggest a two-pronged approach to this though? Since the particle editor is centered around adding and mixing emitters, IMHO it would be great to have a large library of basic effects available that you can mix and match into "complete" effects. So releasing a pack that has both a collection of complete effects such as your fireballs, but also having a large collection of emitters to plug in would be great.
I've personally found that tweaking the effects is not a problem. In fact it is fun. The hard part ends up being creating the "sprite" needed to acheive types of effects kuje good flames, or good starbursts. You know, those pesky white .png's with transparency layers and what not that when colored and put together into an effect give you good looking results.
Any pack that provides a large collection of those building block sprites to create effects with would be worth my money.
#10
I don't mean to discourage him, but encourage him to try and learn the real level of detail you can get into with particles.
03/07/2006 (4:25 pm)
The majority of effects he's showing have either very simple or stock texture bases and are very basic emmision types. If you were to make something to sell you would need some original texture bases for creating unique systems and use combo systems to make more advanced effects. Like how particles were used in the TGB fish demo. Try making a waterfall that splashes and mists and the bottom, leaving a rainbow aura in the air; some explosions combining debri, sparks, novas, and fire; ancient glowering runes floating about in preperation for a spell; dust, dirt, and terrain from a mortar impact, or swirling mystic energy trails, possibly with pseudo 3D depth. Look at the ArcaneFX development if you want to see what the kind of detail you can have with particle (though I know it uses some .dts for it's effects as well).I don't mean to discourage him, but encourage him to try and learn the real level of detail you can get into with particles.
#11
@Anders: Thanks!
@Barry: That's a good idea, and I'll see about doing just that. That'll be much more useful once I've developed a library of sprites though.
@Paul: That's a more constructive post than your last one, and I definitely appreciate it. Yes, I am working on coming up with new sprites and more sophisticated effects but that's dependant on my graphic designer learning about the particle effects stuff. In the meantime I've been composing spell effects using either sprites I can compose myself or sprites that come with the engine -- don't underestimate the value of such things: Given that you need to have all your graphics in video memory at once with TGB, having an array of particle effects that reuse the same sprites does have some value to it. Granted that much of what I've done so far is pretty simplistic, but it's still more sophisticated than most of what I've seen people doing with T2D. The first game that shipped with T2D appears to only use stock effects and the recent demo of ChainWorks uses only a minor variation of stock effects (varying the color). My variations are a bit less minor -- for example, all the jet effects I've produced can be rotated but the steam effect they are based on cannot be. This change required reworking how the particles are motivated. If one were, for example, making an RPG or Zelda style game, effects that can be rotated are very useful.
I'm also trying to rework things to use the smallest number of particles possible so that people don't have to do the work themselves (reducing the quantity of particles is a key problem in using them in a game). With some tweaking and tuning, most of my jet effects now use only 40% of the particles that the original steam jet effect used, but look almost indistinguishable.
My intended audience for this pack is basically people that want to get a game up and running ASAP and not have to tinker with insignificant details right off the bat. I am looking at ArcaneFX and what they're doing, and I intend to come out with some very detailed, role-specific particle effects like that as well once my graphic designer is up to speed but I think there's also a market for simple, generic effects that can be applied in a variety of circumstances with a minimal amount of tweaking.
Variety, and easy of use are important if you just want to put a game together quickly. Hopefully I'll also be able to come up with some sophisticated "wow" type effects as well, and a good array of base sprites but like I said, I think there's some value even in just reusing the sprites that come with the engine efficiently.
03/09/2006 (2:42 pm)
@Kevin: Thanks! I intend to sell the content pack. :)@Anders: Thanks!
@Barry: That's a good idea, and I'll see about doing just that. That'll be much more useful once I've developed a library of sprites though.
@Paul: That's a more constructive post than your last one, and I definitely appreciate it. Yes, I am working on coming up with new sprites and more sophisticated effects but that's dependant on my graphic designer learning about the particle effects stuff. In the meantime I've been composing spell effects using either sprites I can compose myself or sprites that come with the engine -- don't underestimate the value of such things: Given that you need to have all your graphics in video memory at once with TGB, having an array of particle effects that reuse the same sprites does have some value to it. Granted that much of what I've done so far is pretty simplistic, but it's still more sophisticated than most of what I've seen people doing with T2D. The first game that shipped with T2D appears to only use stock effects and the recent demo of ChainWorks uses only a minor variation of stock effects (varying the color). My variations are a bit less minor -- for example, all the jet effects I've produced can be rotated but the steam effect they are based on cannot be. This change required reworking how the particles are motivated. If one were, for example, making an RPG or Zelda style game, effects that can be rotated are very useful.
I'm also trying to rework things to use the smallest number of particles possible so that people don't have to do the work themselves (reducing the quantity of particles is a key problem in using them in a game). With some tweaking and tuning, most of my jet effects now use only 40% of the particles that the original steam jet effect used, but look almost indistinguishable.
My intended audience for this pack is basically people that want to get a game up and running ASAP and not have to tinker with insignificant details right off the bat. I am looking at ArcaneFX and what they're doing, and I intend to come out with some very detailed, role-specific particle effects like that as well once my graphic designer is up to speed but I think there's also a market for simple, generic effects that can be applied in a variety of circumstances with a minimal amount of tweaking.
Variety, and easy of use are important if you just want to put a game together quickly. Hopefully I'll also be able to come up with some sophisticated "wow" type effects as well, and a good array of base sprites but like I said, I think there's some value even in just reusing the sprites that come with the engine efficiently.
#12
11/12/2006 (11:31 pm)
Hey Jon, are you still working on the particle pack? I could really use something like this for my project. Beautiful stuff!
Torque 3D Owner Todd Pickens