I Cast Magic Missle!!!

[Woodwizzle]

I thought the magic effects could updating and I thought I could use some practice with alpha trasparenct in the Gimp. I came up with these. Light missle will soon follow.

[Woodwizzle]

And here are the light missles.

[Dave]

These look good -- but would it be possible to use some kind of haloing effect to put light around the missiles using the alpha channel? (i.e. bright white with levels of alpha decreasing as it gets further from the center of the missile)

It'd have to fit in 70x70 still of course.

David

[Woodwizzle]

These already fade to transparent, especially in the rear. I think it might look odd if the graphics faded from say blue to white and then to transparent.

[Dave]

I mean put a haloing effect in a broad circle around the missiles.

Perhaps I'll try myself to show you what I mean/see if it looks good

David

[Woodwizzle]

What might be a neat idea would be a 2 layered graphics for magic effects. I could make a generic halo graphic to be used on top of all of the other missle graphics, but instead of just lightening the other graphics beneath you could make it color dodge, or multiply.

Or .... A while back on IRC I mentioned adding some real over the top magic effects. Something like SNES Chrono trigger graphics. I thought I'd bring it up again. Here are some Chrono Trigger Screenshots if you don't know what I'm talking about.

http://www.ffextreme.com/ct/images.php
http://chronotrigger.emuparadise.org/sc ... ttles.html

I don't really know how these effects are done, but I assume that there is some scripting involved. There are some small things we could do to avoid a full out scripting system. We could allow the missle animations to be animated. The animations could be either 1 iteration from start to fininsh such as a ball that keeps getting bigger untill it hits a target, or they could be a repeating loop like a rotating fireball. We could also add an animation plays on top of the target and only if the target is hit. Something like a little explosion or a series of explosions.

If possible though, the scripting engine would be far superior. It would allow for some very impressive effects. We could rename the lightning bolt spell to call lightning and make one big bolt drawn from the top of the screen down directly to the target. Accompany it with a few stobe like blue flashes and then paint a singed terrain decal over the exchisting terrain underneath the unit.

Or.... I could paint some halos =)

[fmunoz]

Sweet images. if they are not in the CVS i'll add them...
Maybe with some minor colour change.

[Woodwizzle]

Maybe you could add the halo effect Sirp wants. I havn't been able to do so and make it look good yet.

[telex4]

I'm still holding out for the particle effects Seriously though, it'd be really good if somebody could write some proper effects routines so we didn't have to use bitmaps and alpha masks for special effects.

[Sithrandel]

I'm still holding out for the particle effects Seriously though, it'd be really good if somebody could write some proper effects routines so we didn't have to use bitmaps and alpha masks for special effects.

[curiosity] Just out of interest, what are proper effects routines? I would have thought that bitmaps with alphas offered all that was needed :-S [/curiosity]

[telex4]

I'm still holding out for the particle effects Seriously though, it'd be really good if somebody could write some proper effects routines so we didn't have to use bitmaps and alpha masks for special effects.

[curiosity] Just out of interest, what are proper effects routines? I would have thought that bitmaps with alphas offered all that was needed :-S [/curiosity]

Ok, maybe "proper" is the wrong word. I was thinking more along the lines of the effects being drawn in the game engine using SDL.

For example, some fire effects, particle effects, other cool effects appropriate for magic, and lots of other different effects, .

IMO, effects like those would be far better than sprites moving around the screen, but then they'd also be more work for the coders, who may not be familiar with effects in SDL.

[Sithrandel]

Theoretically hand-drawn (or hand-touched-up) bitmaps will always look better than real-time rendered effects.

The problem of course, is that the resource burden (both in terms of filesize and artists' time) is huge if there are many different effects needed, e.g. for different units / angles / just for variety.

That is when the computer rendered start becoming worthwhile / beneficial.

So... I'd say you are right if we need lots of effects

I'm not to sure that we need those, but then extra eye-candy tends to be lost on me if the game is gripping

There is also a practical problem. For effects to be at their best you'd need position, shape, duration, attack & decay info for each time you wanted an effect used. That isn't a problem for pin-point effects of course.

All in all, consider me planted on the fence on this one.

[telex4]

Theoretically hand-drawn (or hand-touched-up) bitmaps will always look better than real-time rendered effects.

The problem of course, is that the resource burden (both in terms of filesize and artists' time) is huge if there are many different effects needed, e.g. for different units / angles / just for variety.

Indeed. If Wesnoth had somebody who could code special effects, adding them would be fairly easy in comparison to drawing all of the sprites, and doing it well. Wesnoth could have effects for teleporting, killing evil spirits, magical events and other areas where now we have none at all. We could also have more interesting fire effects, for example, as mages cast fire around and it bounces off edges.

I'm not to sure that we need those, but then extra eye-candy tends to be lost on me if the game is gripping

Bah, not even for the cool factor? I'm not exactly bothered by the lack of spiffy real-time rendered effects, I just think they'd be nice to have, and would make Wesnoth look far more professional and up to date (if anybody's concerned about that).

[quartex]

"I just think they'd be nice to have, and would make Wesnoth look far more professional and up to date (if anybody's concerned about that)."

Bah, Wesnoth 's graphics will always be described as "functional" or "old-school", and i wouldn't want it any other way. I could care less about graphics as long as the gameplay is solid. As miyo says "our resources are limited, let's use them wisely". We have some good artists, and I love the sprite-based artwork, but it's the gameplay that makes Wesnoth special, not the pretty pictures, and it always will be.

Some of my favorite games are Spiderweb Software's Exile/Avernum/Geneforge RPHs which all have very dated graphics, but excellent storylines and gameplay, and in the end, that's why makes the games shine.

[telex4]

Of course gameplay is the most important thing, which is why I'm not bothered by the graphics, but having better graphics doesn't make the game worse, unless you're a die-hard early 90s pixel fan