[Mod] Arcane Power! Sexing up the spell effects.

from Elemental Forums

UPDATED 8/23/2010
     Changed the WHAT section to reflect development goals based on what I've seen in the Particle Cauldron.

UPDATED 8/24/2010
     Added a link to my first spell effect revamp.

-=-=- THE WHY =-=-
     I'm a geek. I grew up with games, and they're a big part of my life. In fact, I dream of a job working on them, and in a respect more specific than most might decide. You see, ever since I was 5 and mom named the Black Mage in her Final Fantasy 1 party after me (or as near as 4 letters allowed), I've been obsessed with magic in games. Watching BRI thrust his pixellated hands forward with a cascade of ice, and seeing a horde of enemies obliterated one by one in a mass of blue pixels was quite agreeable to my young eyes, and since then I always play a mage when I can. Something about annihilating enemies in a flashy display of raw power has always been awesome to me, and the flashier the better. That dream job of mine? I hope to one day do special effects art for games. I want to be the guy who makes your screen more fun to look at for 20 seconds when you click "Summon: Bahumut".

     Reason 1: Have fun.
          I get a kick out of flashy explosions. I get a bigger kick out of making them. Some people will probably want to tone
          the vanilla effects down, and I am not one of those people. I want even minor spells to evoke a sense of impact, power,
          and flash.

     Reason 2: Escalation.
             What I mean by this: Consider World of Warcraft's spell effects. When I played, at least, rank 12 Ice Bolt
          looked identical to rank 1. I think that's lazy. Spells of higher levels should become prettier, and if it's possible, I want
          spells to get more intense if you're controlling more shards. Why should Fire Bolt LOOK the same when it's doing 3x as much damage
          because a sovereign is able to tap directly into the source of its shard-based energies?

-=-= THE WHAT =-=-
     This will be updated based on what I'm CURRENTLY working on at the time. Check the top of the post for the most recent update date.

      Primary Objective: Learn about the Cauldron
               This goes without saying. Between play sessions, I'll be messing around with the particle effects editor. I've some experience
           with tools like these, but I want to get a workflow down, try and discover the ins and outs of the program, and if I'm feeling
           especially ambitious, I will try and figure out if it can be modded, and how to do so. The way color interpolation is handled is terrible.

      Next Objective: Textures
               The vanilla textures used in the spell effects are... Subpar. There are too many hard edges; cartoony images as particles can
           work (See Zelda: Wind Waker), but not like this. I'll create new textures for dust and fire, and aim to increase the general
           variety available. More sparkles, gradients, shapes, rings, etc.

 

Here's the result of my initial experimentation!

 

More to come. Stay tuned :]

13,481 views 11 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

There is an "Effects Editor" with Elemental, so, you should have more or less everything you need to do this right from the start. Good luck :).

That's very inspiring btw, so, I tell you what. If this turns out good and I think it looks "kick ass" then you can consider it to be a official part of the "Dragonlance Mod" if you'd like. But it has to be top of the line ;) Dragonlance deserves nothing less.

 

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Yeah, and I can't wait to get my hands on it!

Though as I said, I'm doing this for myself and sharing the results. While I can tell you're enthusiastic about the mod you have planned from your forum activity, I admit I dislike the "hey you, work for me to build my vision" attitude. Remember that It's you and your mod's job to impress me and the community, not the other way around. I preordered Elemental year ago because I loved Elemental, not because I forsaw an OH EM GEE EPIC MOD in its future.

In short? If you end up liking my work, you can bundle it in with your mod with proper credit and my permission.

Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting MagicWeasel, reply 2
Yeah, and I can't wait to get my hands on it!
In short? If you end up liking my work, you can bundle it in with your mod with proper credit and my permission.

That's all I was going for ;) That and I thought you'd like to get your Mod out to as many players as possible. I meant no offense or to try to "Draft" you, my friend.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Whew. Got the game and browsed some of the effects. Some are decent, but I'll have lots of work to do! *_*

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting MagicWeasel, reply 4
Whew. Got the game and browsed some of the effects. Some are decent, but I'll have lots of work to do!

I've noticed custom particles can be made in PSD form (I use Photoshop for that) and used in the particle editor. I'm not sure what your skills are with making new custom art but if you need a hand or need any specific sprites made I could probably find time between the other stuff I'm doing. Just say the word.

Although, I'm going to assume you can probably do that on your own just as easily as I can, but, you can never be too sure so I thought I'd offer.

;)

 

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

The offer is appreciated, though I'm no stranger to texture creation, as you suspected!

My main gripe is the utterly convoluted way of dealing with color and alpha. It seems you need to create a texture; a single row of pixels, and the Cauldron draws color and alpha information from that texture like a timeline over the particle's lifespan. They warn on startup that the Cauldron is hard to use, but I've /never/ seen such basic functionality -- color? transparency!? -- handled in such an amazingly unintuitive fashion. I'm hoping I'm mistaken here and that I have more options. I'm also hoping that the Cauldron is not neglected in Stardock's long term support plan for this game; this thing needs love.

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

I think Fireball should be first on your list :P A 2d "campire" effect duplicated in a line to target is.. :/

I'm not much of an artist to help, but would like to wish you luck on the project :)

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting MagicWeasel, reply 6
The offer is appreciated, though I'm no stranger to texture creation, as you suspected!

My main gripe is the utterly convoluted way of dealing with color and alpha. It seems you need to create a texture; a single row of pixels, and the Cauldron draws color and alpha information from that texture like a timeline over the particle's lifespan. They warn on startup that the Cauldron is hard to use, but I've /never/ seen such basic functionality -- color? transparency!? -- handled in such an amazingly unintuitive fashion. I'm hoping I'm mistaken here and that I have more options. I'm also hoping that the Cauldron is not neglected in Stardock's long term support plan for this game; this thing needs love.

Good to know. Honestly, aside from seeing that I could make particles with PSD's I haven't tried to use the Cauldron yet. I have however noticed a trend in Stardock's tools. They seem "Hard to use" or "un-intuitive" at first but then they grow on you the more you use them. There are a few issues with the map editor that I think could have been handled in a more "user friendly" way, but I also contribute part of that to my lack of knowledge with the tool which will grow as I use it more. Definitely good stuff to know about the Cauldron though. The offer stands as needed so if you need some custom artwork just shout.

:)

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

Whee! More powerful magic! Boom, boom, hahahaha!

...ahem. Yes, making magic flashier is worthy of...of good things.

-cough-

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

im having a lot of fun with the cauldron, is a very good  and intuitive tool, and im sure we can make some realy awesome effect with tha baby :D

 love you stardock ^_^

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

As someone who has worked with programs like these before, Icecrown, Stardock's particle engine is neither very good nor intuitive. They can and should do better than this. If not, we had better be able to mod and refine this tool ourselves.

Torchlight's TorchED tool has a much better particle editor. The 'ribbon trail' particle type is very cool, and you are able to use various physics nodes such as a jet, gravity well, and vortex to affect movement dynamically. Color was handled with a color picker and a gradient bar that could be customized on-the-fly by setting color and alpha handles, just like in photoshop.

Even SecondLife, where particles are handled entirely through a text interface (coding, and not the weak XML variety), is easier (in my opinion) to use and has better features. The only shortcoming, while a pretty sizeable one, is a lack of keyframe ability. You often have to make more emitters than normal to achieve a desired effect.

My suggestions and wishes for The Cauldron:

Improve color and alpha selection. There's no reason not to use gradient handles such as those in photoshop. If ditching XML is necessary to achieve this, so be it!

Reduce clickage required to set graphic options. I have to go into arm-spasm clicking mode to move through lists quickly using those silly left and right arrows. A dropdown would be better, and a texture browser type window ideal.

Scroll bars. While minor, I believe is not just an issue with the cauldron. When clicking and dragging a scroll bar, if at any point your mouse moves far enough to the left or right to exit the tin vertical column the scrollbar occupies, the focus is instantly dropped, scrolling stops, and you have to click back in to continue. Add a buffer zone to the left and right.