Dev Diary #12 - Technical Artists - Tech or Artists?
Hey folks,
it is time for another Dev Diary! It's been a while - huh?
You’ve already heard about our cards, our art and our voice actors, so let’s spice it up! Do you know how the part of the game that you can see comes together? That’s the magic of our Technical Artists 🪄
[h3]Technical Artists[/h3] take the produced assets - be it buildings, characters or cards - bring them into the game, and make sure they’re connected properly so that they don’t only look pretty but are also functional.
Interested? Then let’s have a look at some Cards of Fate, shall we?
The process to reach the final VFX stage is as follows:
The Designers design a card and describe the look and mechanic, information which is collected in super-secret lists.
At the end, each card entry contains the name, the faction it’s assigned, which hero can play the card and how it should look in the game.
Our artists then take this information, and, knowing the visual style of our game the best, translate it into a Card artwork, like these:
Once a Developer has implemented the mechanics to make this card work, it’s our Technical Artists turn. They have a look at the secret list and the card artwork, then make the VFX come to life ✨.
When they have a version they can show, they post it to our artists and designers to get feedback. That’s it! Thanks for reading!
Of course not! There is more to it. VFX can go through many iterations until we get the final look to feel and play right. Let’s take our Heavenly Scouts card, for example. You might remember this look from the old Demo:
[h3]But after having created so many VFX,[/h3] we knew we could do better. So that’s what we did!
We adjusted the play effect by adding more glowing circles around the army, highlighting the area. The symbol for Heavenly scouts now shows up later, with more glow, particles and rays, highlighting it to give it more visibility. The symbol also stays longer, giving the player time to appreciate the effect. Then, the lasting effect, which is visible for the card’s duration, got a stronger glow at the bottom, and is accompanied by golden birds at the top, just like in the card artwork. In the end, it looked like this!
This improvement process was done also for other cards, like Divine Revenge. This card deals damage to the enemy if your unit dies. To visualize this, we had... nothing.
So, we added a neat effect! The sword from the card artwork pierces the affected area. The affected units glow from within their bodies, ready to unleash the divine power to damage their enemies if they die in battle. A sword above their head marks them.
[h3]Divine Intervention,[/h3] the card that summons Luminant knights onto the battlefield to aid your cause, look like this:
To give it the celestial vibe it deserves, we improved the build-up, adding more golden swirls that focus on a point of energy before exploding and raining down in a divine shower which spawn the Luminant knights.
We also have a little special card for you, one that has come with our new Demo update, along with a new neutral hero for you to play!
[h3]Fool’s gold! [/h3]
This Card makes a pile of gold appear on the battlefield. Blinded by their greed, the enemies rush to the pile, unaware that it 💥explodes 💥after a while, bringing them to their demise. To create this effect, first we started by creating the coins falling from the sky.
Adding a particle effect with a coin mesh and the corresponding texture, we added a collision to make them bounce off the ground.
For the pile of gold itself, we utilized some performance tricks. Instead of creating a mesh with hundreds of coins, we simulated coins falling on a pile in blender, to extract the coin texture into photoshop. We added some layers, to color it properly, and finally created a simple, low-poly mesh in the shape of a pile to add the coin texture. It works wonders!
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Finally, adding a shader with a moving texture, some glow below the pile, some shadows, and sparkles coming from the magical coins, the gold looks really tempting, right? But there’s more to bring it all together! Some dust while the coins fall and the pile grows, a golden swirl highlighting the affected area upon playing the card, and the explosion effect with coins flying everywhere make this effect truly fun to watch and play.
Cool, right?
You might have noticed our cards have different colors. (Duh, you knew that already, you read our Dev Diaries!) We just covered some of the Battle cards (red), what about our strategy cards (blue)? Let’s look at the Adventure Card!
This one has been in the Demo for a long time, but we often got feedback that we should have more visual support to make them distinguishable. And you were right. Look at this, if it weren’t for the card, would you know you could explore this location?
Rhetorical question, of course not. So, we added a visual cue to make the location stand out more. Behind closed doors is something for you, and you get curious. But how can you figure it out? By dragging the Card over it? Exactly! And only after you’ve explored that location, does it return to normal.
[h3]Encamp Army[/h3] is a new card, that you can try out on your own! But a simple hint: It helps you a lot!
Of course, you can build your camp around your unit while it’s not moving! Great for managing multiple units!
But how did it look like? Well, like... nothing?
So, we added some play effects consisting of some grey and golden construction smoke (so it’s visible on the light and dark side). After it’s gone, a small camp surrounds the army, consisting of tents, a small watchtower and a barricade, making sure no one enters. A small golden glow ensures that the camp has good contrast on all types of grounds.
Only after you move will the camp get destroyed and disappear.
[h3]In Songs of Silence,[/h3] you can not only manage your army, but also your Kingdom, or any location you possess, providing you have the required materials. Each location can have one additional building, like the Golden Temple, which you’ve seen and used in the Demo. This card increases your Divine Favor income and grants you knew recruitment options. But did you know it has some lore behind it?
At the top of the temple, bodies that have passed away are being burned, so they can ascend to the Celestials. But the old building implementation didn't show any of it!
So, we asked our artists! And they provided us with these overpaints! It’s not really visible here, but it got the point across: Add blue smoke with golden sparkles.
So, that’s what we did!
Additionally, we added more recruitment VFX. Before, in our old demo when you recruited a new unit, nothing happened, and the unit popped into existence out of nowhere. To show their different nature, we divided the recruitment options into 4 different ones with unique effects, which you can see here:
[h3]You know what’s the hardest part of these VFX?[/h3] Making them fit into our yellow biome. To find that perfect color balance that fits into a dark or green or red or YELLOW biome. You know why this is so hard? Because almost ANY sparkling and golden glow effect gets lost in our yellow biome!
You can best see it on these Lootwagon Effects. Each color represents another rarity.
On the darker side, the colorful sparkles and swirls are well visible and give shape to the light beam. To make these also visible on our green and yellow biomes, we added a black glow behind the beams. They’re not visible in the dark biome, not only give depth to the beams in the lighter biomes, but also add contrast to make them visible.
For different ways of how we handled contrast, simply look at this fire effect:
Even if it's small, you notice the red fire of doom immediately on the dark side map, but the black smoke gets lost. It’s exactly the other way around on the light side map. For this effect, we made use of the main colors present, and added them in a well contrast.
As you see, we’re putting a lot of time and effort to not only provide you with a story-rich game with amazing mechanics on the strategy map and in the battles, but also to make them feel good. Whether it be by improving the timings of the effect to make the impact go “Whoomph”, add visual cues to make it more understandable, or simply make them look better.
[h3]We love this game, we love the looks and how it plays, and we hope you will too! [/h3]
Thank you for reading, we hope this Dev Diary helped you understand our Technical Artists VFX process more!
Lots of love!
Ilcin & the Chimera Team
it is time for another Dev Diary! It's been a while - huh?
You’ve already heard about our cards, our art and our voice actors, so let’s spice it up! Do you know how the part of the game that you can see comes together? That’s the magic of our Technical Artists 🪄
[h3]Technical Artists[/h3] take the produced assets - be it buildings, characters or cards - bring them into the game, and make sure they’re connected properly so that they don’t only look pretty but are also functional.
Interested? Then let’s have a look at some Cards of Fate, shall we?
The process to reach the final VFX stage is as follows:
The Designers design a card and describe the look and mechanic, information which is collected in super-secret lists.
At the end, each card entry contains the name, the faction it’s assigned, which hero can play the card and how it should look in the game.
Our artists then take this information, and, knowing the visual style of our game the best, translate it into a Card artwork, like these:
Once a Developer has implemented the mechanics to make this card work, it’s our Technical Artists turn. They have a look at the secret list and the card artwork, then make the VFX come to life ✨.
When they have a version they can show, they post it to our artists and designers to get feedback. That’s it! Thanks for reading!
Of course not! There is more to it. VFX can go through many iterations until we get the final look to feel and play right. Let’s take our Heavenly Scouts card, for example. You might remember this look from the old Demo:
[h3]But after having created so many VFX,[/h3] we knew we could do better. So that’s what we did!
We adjusted the play effect by adding more glowing circles around the army, highlighting the area. The symbol for Heavenly scouts now shows up later, with more glow, particles and rays, highlighting it to give it more visibility. The symbol also stays longer, giving the player time to appreciate the effect. Then, the lasting effect, which is visible for the card’s duration, got a stronger glow at the bottom, and is accompanied by golden birds at the top, just like in the card artwork. In the end, it looked like this!
This improvement process was done also for other cards, like Divine Revenge. This card deals damage to the enemy if your unit dies. To visualize this, we had... nothing.
So, we added a neat effect! The sword from the card artwork pierces the affected area. The affected units glow from within their bodies, ready to unleash the divine power to damage their enemies if they die in battle. A sword above their head marks them.
[h3]Divine Intervention,[/h3] the card that summons Luminant knights onto the battlefield to aid your cause, look like this:
Before
After
To give it the celestial vibe it deserves, we improved the build-up, adding more golden swirls that focus on a point of energy before exploding and raining down in a divine shower which spawn the Luminant knights.
We also have a little special card for you, one that has come with our new Demo update, along with a new neutral hero for you to play!
[h3]Fool’s gold! [/h3]
This Card makes a pile of gold appear on the battlefield. Blinded by their greed, the enemies rush to the pile, unaware that it 💥explodes 💥after a while, bringing them to their demise. To create this effect, first we started by creating the coins falling from the sky.
Adding a particle effect with a coin mesh and the corresponding texture, we added a collision to make them bounce off the ground.
For the pile of gold itself, we utilized some performance tricks. Instead of creating a mesh with hundreds of coins, we simulated coins falling on a pile in blender, to extract the coin texture into photoshop. We added some layers, to color it properly, and finally created a simple, low-poly mesh in the shape of a pile to add the coin texture. It works wonders!
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Finally, adding a shader with a moving texture, some glow below the pile, some shadows, and sparkles coming from the magical coins, the gold looks really tempting, right? But there’s more to bring it all together! Some dust while the coins fall and the pile grows, a golden swirl highlighting the affected area upon playing the card, and the explosion effect with coins flying everywhere make this effect truly fun to watch and play.
Cool, right?
You might have noticed our cards have different colors. (Duh, you knew that already, you read our Dev Diaries!) We just covered some of the Battle cards (red), what about our strategy cards (blue)? Let’s look at the Adventure Card!
This one has been in the Demo for a long time, but we often got feedback that we should have more visual support to make them distinguishable. And you were right. Look at this, if it weren’t for the card, would you know you could explore this location?
Before
After
Rhetorical question, of course not. So, we added a visual cue to make the location stand out more. Behind closed doors is something for you, and you get curious. But how can you figure it out? By dragging the Card over it? Exactly! And only after you’ve explored that location, does it return to normal.
[h3]Encamp Army[/h3] is a new card, that you can try out on your own! But a simple hint: It helps you a lot!
Of course, you can build your camp around your unit while it’s not moving! Great for managing multiple units!
But how did it look like? Well, like... nothing?
Before
After
So, we added some play effects consisting of some grey and golden construction smoke (so it’s visible on the light and dark side). After it’s gone, a small camp surrounds the army, consisting of tents, a small watchtower and a barricade, making sure no one enters. A small golden glow ensures that the camp has good contrast on all types of grounds.
Only after you move will the camp get destroyed and disappear.
[h3]In Songs of Silence,[/h3] you can not only manage your army, but also your Kingdom, or any location you possess, providing you have the required materials. Each location can have one additional building, like the Golden Temple, which you’ve seen and used in the Demo. This card increases your Divine Favor income and grants you knew recruitment options. But did you know it has some lore behind it?
At the top of the temple, bodies that have passed away are being burned, so they can ascend to the Celestials. But the old building implementation didn't show any of it!
So, we asked our artists! And they provided us with these overpaints! It’s not really visible here, but it got the point across: Add blue smoke with golden sparkles.
So, that’s what we did!
Additionally, we added more recruitment VFX. Before, in our old demo when you recruited a new unit, nothing happened, and the unit popped into existence out of nowhere. To show their different nature, we divided the recruitment options into 4 different ones with unique effects, which you can see here:
[h3]You know what’s the hardest part of these VFX?[/h3] Making them fit into our yellow biome. To find that perfect color balance that fits into a dark or green or red or YELLOW biome. You know why this is so hard? Because almost ANY sparkling and golden glow effect gets lost in our yellow biome!
You can best see it on these Lootwagon Effects. Each color represents another rarity.
On the darker side, the colorful sparkles and swirls are well visible and give shape to the light beam. To make these also visible on our green and yellow biomes, we added a black glow behind the beams. They’re not visible in the dark biome, not only give depth to the beams in the lighter biomes, but also add contrast to make them visible.
For different ways of how we handled contrast, simply look at this fire effect:
Even if it's small, you notice the red fire of doom immediately on the dark side map, but the black smoke gets lost. It’s exactly the other way around on the light side map. For this effect, we made use of the main colors present, and added them in a well contrast.
As you see, we’re putting a lot of time and effort to not only provide you with a story-rich game with amazing mechanics on the strategy map and in the battles, but also to make them feel good. Whether it be by improving the timings of the effect to make the impact go “Whoomph”, add visual cues to make it more understandable, or simply make them look better.
[h3]We love this game, we love the looks and how it plays, and we hope you will too! [/h3]
Thank you for reading, we hope this Dev Diary helped you understand our Technical Artists VFX process more!
Lots of love!
Ilcin & the Chimera Team
