Big chunky visual effects
Hello! Now that I finished making my game’s characters squash and stretch all over the place, I moved on to drawing some new visual effects. Hopefully I can make the game as messy and chaotic to look at as it is to play!
I started out with nothing but this doodle to guide me:
Two weeks later, this is what I have:
I think this is already a huge improvement on the old game! Enemies kick up dust when they slide around, splash water everywhere when they fall off a ledge, and send huge hitsparks flying all over the screen when they get launched into a wall:
I beefed up the enemies’ projectiles too, so the moles’ orbs and the cats’ fireballs feel just as wild as everything else in the game. Enemy boars don’t show up in the above video but I made their flames way bigger too:
I don’t know if this next one counts as a visual effect, but I also made enemies spread out by a couple of pixels when you push them all together. So now if you stack up five slimes onto the same grid square and hit them all out at once, it really feels like you’re hitting a stack of five slimes:
I’ve made a few other small visual effect tweaks, but these are all the main ones. I’d love to know what you think of them! There are still plenty of other things I want to do, like adding more hitstop when an enemy is launched into a wall to make the impact feel heavier. It would be nice to add some cool screen-freezing effects to the game’s big climactic moments too, such as using a bomb or dealing the finishing blow to a boss. Regardless, I’m pretty happy with what I have so far!
Anything else?
I’m still ill with a sinus infection and stomach problems, both of which have been plaguing me since November. They’ve been making it pretty hard for me to get much work done over the past few months, but the good news is that I’m being treated for them. The stomach problems are quickly clearing up and hopefully my sinus problems start fixing themselves soon too. Here’s hoping!
It’s been a good couple of weeks for thinking about game design. I really enjoyed Kayin’s post about the downsides of "Quality of Life" game design changes and Boghog’s post about the issues and limitations that come with thinking about videogame design through the lens of "fairness", both of which do a great job of discussing the modern trend of making every game as smooth and frictionless as possible.
Speaking of Boghog, the fun and difficult beat em up prototype that he made last week is a blast! If you liked my post on getting into beat em ups with The Punisher and want to see those beat em up gameplay dynamics pushed to their absolute limit, it's worth giving the game a try or watching Kriegor's attempt at clearing it. It's an extremely difficult game though, and almost certainly not appropriate for people who are new to the genre.
That’s all I’ve done recently, other than hanging out with friends and playing fighting games. On that note, I’m going to go eat some focaccia and play some Melty Blood. I hope you have a great couple of weeks and I’ll see you next time!