Below you find a small demo video prepared by Krys in order to illustrate some of the new animated ADOM spell effects. We are looking for feedback, especially also from the folks who do not have access to the prereleases.
So, what do you think?
The Official Blog for ADOM (Ancient Domains Of Mystery)
Monday, July 21, 2014
More feedback to animated spell effects, please!
Hi everyone!
Below you find a small demo video prepared by Krys in order to illustrate some of the new animated ADOM spell effects. We are looking for feedback, especially also from the folks who do not have access to the prereleases.
So, what do you think?
Below you find a small demo video prepared by Krys in order to illustrate some of the new animated ADOM spell effects. We are looking for feedback, especially also from the folks who do not have access to the prereleases.
So, what do you think?
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What I think: Some of the spells I could not see. Burnng Hands had an excuse and that is that the animation won't kick in unless it's attacking an actual enemy. All the spells I could see animations for, though, were Darkness and Light. But of them, they look pretty freaking sweet. Props to you guys for jobs well done. Now, I can't pretend to know a thing about animations.Anyone who's stalked my youtube channel knows this. But maybe, if there were animations to fire and acid spells, you could make the animation more prominent?
ReplyDeleteAlso, IDK if you guys already have one yet, but I just thought of an idea for the bless animation; Simply put a white light that shines from above on the blessed character.and a sigil that represents some kind of holy symbol on the caster. just an idea.... -hides-
I honestly believe drawing sigils on top of charcters is a mistake. At this sort of scale it looks messy and confusing. Perhaps slightly 'above' the chartacter's head would be better (and more in line with the more generally accepted game interface logic)?
ReplyDeleteBy placing them above the character we'll run into perspective issues which will probably be even more confusing.
DeleteIf everyone unanimously hates the symbols, we can take them down and just use the particles for example. But so far most people enjoy them quite a bit :)
The sigil might be better if it was smaller and flashed just before the actual spell effect. Now it seems like an afterthought and not a cause for the spell to happen.
ReplyDeleteNot a prerelease tester so cannot say for other spells, but the ball spells look a bit weird from the video. Would be much cooler if it expanded outwards from the character (smoothly if possible)
Just my 2c
Current idea is to have a delay based on range from the caster. Closest squares trigger their animations first etc. Should give us a nice wave effect just like you suggest :)
DeleteInteresting suggestion about the timing, just might try that :)
Spells should "travel" like all of these are good for magic missile except the red of course, go for a 2D representation of a "thick smoke trail":
ReplyDeletehttp://youtu.be/y8w9YU4Lyww
Magic missile should look like this:
http://youtu.be/5L-mzLwnlgk?t=1m16s
Make the ray more robust and 2D
Frost bolt should look like a blue-white version of this green spell:
http://youtu.be/okEHMSNEX28?t=13s
But in your video:
Most effects seem to explode on the character? Its quite disturbing. You know, we fans of wizard characters like to SHOOT with spells?
I could only recognize the web spell. In case of others there is a faint colored line is progressing forward = THAT should be the spell ray! - is that supposed to be the streaming energy? - , while your current "spell effect action" takes place on the body of the character? Um, why? My eyes always are drawn to the enemy expecting a steady "hose stream" comparable to this but you ought to do a 2D version:
http://youtu.be/KNH-Ffd-MYg?t=12s
,but in ADOM the character "explodes".
Web for example should produce its spell icon and around it an animated web "particles" - take some web thread graphics from the web sprites - and animate it like an exploding haystack.
The thick smoke trail does look awesome, and it could work for linear spells .but i think the way adom is coded might give them trouble for bouncy spells.
DeleteThe ASCII version had the best shooting effect. Bouncing could be done using a round sprite graphics - still one missile-unit like the ASCII +plus sign and draw those into the middle of the currently empty faint red placeholder-rectangles of the magic missile - but if you can scale these round sprites UP so they intersect, while "flowing forward" visually creating a near continuous bouncing flow.
DeleteOr since Zeno Rogue has the coordinates of two adjacent magic missile rectangles, simply take "spla_v.png" from the firebolt, but recolor it purple or something and draw several of these missile bolts intersecting each other: between the center of the magic missile rectangles now you will have like 4 or 5 bolt-sprites intersecting, drawn somewhat onto each other.
DeleteThis way no need to scale up the sprites so they remain in the boundary of the current placeholder bouncing magic-missile rectangle.
This way there is no need to figure out, how to draw a bounceable sprite either!
Quality standard ought to be the bouncing spells should flow exactly like the firebolt in pre-release 23 or the Lightning bolt.
They do look awesome, But I would display the sigil Instantly as the spell is cast.. not afterwords. It should become recognisable instantly and then expect the Effect. not the other way arround.
ReplyDeleteThere also seems to be a tiling issue with AOE spells... Now it just looks like multiple spells cast near each other... (see Darkness spell) the spell Light was a lot better .. (and now that i re-watched it, it does happen a lot Faster!) Maybe dragging it out would be a mistake.
Overall I find the spell effects a plus to the game but the realisation is just a tad bit under the quality standard.
As I thought earlier. I don't like sigils that much. Most spell effects are fine. I didn't like the blue AoE spells (probably darkness?) AoE should be more area wide effect instead of small drops on each tile.
ReplyDeleteHow about displaying the spell Symbol at the same time the message ("you focus the spell, wich direction?") message shows up?
ReplyDeletehat could give the player more time to see the animation ..
You should really try to showcase the wonderfull graphics more.
Not sure how difficult that would be, but that sounds good to me.
Delete