Dev blog 42 - Particles
Salutations!
Recently we started looking into adding more particles to the game. We knew for a while it’s one of our weak points since nobody on the team was experienced with making them. After a recent game release, we asked Croteam if we could borrow their particle creator, and they agreed, so now we have Alen, a person with experience who’s making a lot of our particles. He’s making them really fast too! We also added support for geometric particles (it’s basically just a model with a specific shader that makes it look cool). Today’s post shows how our particle visuals have improved since you last saw the game during the festivals.
Grail of Piety relic (reset ability cooldown to all allies)
Vial of Pure Water relic (heal health)
Vial of Poison relic (target takes health damage every turn)
Shield Block (take less damage per stack)
Hunter's Mark (target takes more damage from caster)
The design and art members are working together to discuss which things need particles, and how they should look. The current idea for status effects is to make all buffs use one and all debuffs use another effect. We figure this should make it clear what type of effect was granted, and inspection of the unit can help you note what the effect does. On that note, our lead art boi has started working on improving the UI elements, to make them a cohesive whole, which might prompt a change to how we present unit info. Once we have something done, I’ll be showing that off.
We could also use some feedback on something. One discussion point was about making each status effect to have its own unique icon in the particle effect, instead of having all buffs use the same icon and all debuffs use another icon. Do you think it’s better to have all status effects have a unique icon or is having a single icon for buff/debuff types good enough (like the Hunter's Mark and Vial of Poison gifs)? Give us your thoughts in the steam forums, comments, or our Discord server. I attempt to read all of those, but your 100% chance is Discord.
MarkoP
https://store.steampowered.com/app/600610/The_Hand_of_Merlin/
Recently we started looking into adding more particles to the game. We knew for a while it’s one of our weak points since nobody on the team was experienced with making them. After a recent game release, we asked Croteam if we could borrow their particle creator, and they agreed, so now we have Alen, a person with experience who’s making a lot of our particles. He’s making them really fast too! We also added support for geometric particles (it’s basically just a model with a specific shader that makes it look cool). Today’s post shows how our particle visuals have improved since you last saw the game during the festivals.
Grail of Piety relic (reset ability cooldown to all allies)
Vial of Pure Water relic (heal health)
Vial of Poison relic (target takes health damage every turn)
Shield Block (take less damage per stack)
Hunter's Mark (target takes more damage from caster)
The design and art members are working together to discuss which things need particles, and how they should look. The current idea for status effects is to make all buffs use one and all debuffs use another effect. We figure this should make it clear what type of effect was granted, and inspection of the unit can help you note what the effect does. On that note, our lead art boi has started working on improving the UI elements, to make them a cohesive whole, which might prompt a change to how we present unit info. Once we have something done, I’ll be showing that off.
We could also use some feedback on something. One discussion point was about making each status effect to have its own unique icon in the particle effect, instead of having all buffs use the same icon and all debuffs use another icon. Do you think it’s better to have all status effects have a unique icon or is having a single icon for buff/debuff types good enough (like the Hunter's Mark and Vial of Poison gifs)? Give us your thoughts in the steam forums, comments, or our Discord server. I attempt to read all of those, but your 100% chance is Discord.
MarkoP
https://store.steampowered.com/app/600610/The_Hand_of_Merlin/