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[joedev]

That explosion looks pretty awesome, but I agree that maybe the chunks should be a little bit bigger.

Is every pixel becoming it's own particle in the gif?

[DiscordGames]

That explosion looks pretty awesome, but I agree that maybe the chunks should be a little bit bigger.

Is every pixel becoming it's own particle in the gif?

Yea, right now when stuff is destroyed, it's 1:1 pixel to particle. We thought it looked pretty cool, but I guess I'll have to think about it a bit more.

Edit: OK, I have a really cool idea on how to improve this... I just need to figure out how to do it.

[Bandreus]

Yea, right now when stuff is destroyed, it's 1:1 pixel to particle. We thought it looked pretty cool, but I guess I'll have to think about it a bit more.

If you turn every sprite's pixel into a particle, it sells more as disintegrating or turning something into dust (which might be a cool effect in itself if tweaked more).

But as long as smashing a crate with a sword, it definitely looks off. You do expect pieces of wood and splits flying everywhere, rather than the entire thing being pulverized.

It does look cool, it's just that it doesn't fit well the object being destroyed, and the tool used to make it happen.

[happymonster]

If you keep the code as it is, but clump some adjacent pixles into various size shapes (i.e. all the particles in the clump have the same angle and momentum) then that would give you the explosion effect with different sized clumps.

[DiscordGames]

If you keep the code as it is, but clump some adjacent pixles into various size shapes (i.e. all the particles in the clump have the same angle and momentum) then that would give you the explosion effect with different sized clumps.

This is what I'm planning on doing. Reading up on the Voronoi method (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voronoi_diagram) to break the sprites into chunks, then the entire chunk will basically be one particle.

Thanks for the feedback guys, I appreciate it.

[DiscordGames]

Haha alright, so after the negative feedback I decided to attempt this a bit differently. This time, I'm randomly generating shards out of the sprite, loading those shards into dynamic particles, and then setting them loose! In this clip, the crate is split into 15 shards (a bit more efficient than 360-some particles), however there's a little overhead in generating the Color[,] for the pixel data that I really need to optimize if I stick with this.

Also, if you're wondering why we didn't just make some shard textures, it's because I'd like this to be dynamic and work with more complex things like enemies as well without us creating new content constantly.



Ps. I ran into a physics bug when I was writing it where stuff sank into the ground. Thought it looked pretty cool so I had it do that instead of fade out or disappear.

[happymonster]

Much better!!

[DiscordGames]

So I got to thinking of other uses for this thing. Eye enemies no longer explode into pixels to say the least :D



The slicing is completely random right now so you end up with all sorts of cool variations when killing eyeballs! Also, I optimized the sprite slicing code so there's absolutely no memory allocations during gameplay now. I just need to write a proper system for handling the actives.

[eigenbom]

Cool, dynamic sprite slicing!

[Ashkin]

Cool! Now, how about rotating the chunks a little?

[DiscordGames]

Cool! Now, how about rotating the chunks a little?

There's no good way to do arbitrary rotation with pixel art like this that I know of. Usually the artist would make a sprite animation for rotation, but these are dynamic pieces so that's out of the question. If you let the video card try to rotate it, it'll get ugly quick. I might mess around with it a bit later to see how bad it looks.

Here's the latest all together. I've added the active tracking system for sprite slices, and they now stay until you leave the screen.

[Hipshot]

Hmm, that sprite slice thing is a really good idea. Looks really cool - would there be a way to add an "edge color" or something to the sprite? I mean, so there would be a red small outline where the slice is made, to enhance the blood effect on certain things? Honestly, that system is really good, for the reasons you just stated, no need to sit and create a lot of gibs for every monster variation and such... Because, if you don't feel like doing that, or don't have the time, you just will never get it in the game, even if gibs and gore could ad a lot to a sword game.

I see you have damage numbers, we just got that in yesterday, looks pretty much the same. But I asked the programmer to remove the "-" from the text, somehow it seems implicit. Maybe you could try that? Also, we color coded is so damage from the player is yellow and when he gets hit, it's red (and healed green), because red seemed like a more serious color and getting hit seems like a bad thing =)

[DiscordGames]

Hmm, that sprite slice thing is a really good idea. Looks really cool - would there be a way to add an "edge color" or something to the sprite? I mean, so there would be a red small outline where the slice is made, to enhance the blood effect on certain things? Honestly, that system is really good, for the reasons you just stated, no need to sit and create a lot of gibs for every monster variation and such... Because, if you don't feel like doing that, or don't have the time, you just will never get it in the game, even if gibs and gore could ad a lot to a sword game.

I see you have damage numbers, we just got that in yesterday, looks pretty much the same. But I asked the programmer to remove the "-" from the text, somehow it seems implicit. Maybe you could try that? Also, we color coded is so damage from the player is yellow and when he gets hit, it's red (and healed green), because red seemed like a more serious color and getting hit seems like a bad thing =)

Excellent points all around! You're game looks awesome btw. I will try the method you described with the damage numbers, that definitely makes sense.

And yea, it's definitely possible to add blood or whatever to where the slice is. It would just take some extra processing to find the edges that touch others and color them differently. Each splice is actually just an array of colors, so there's no difficulty modifying it.

[Raku]

Ah, this looks beautiful! I'm loving all the blues that you seem to mix into everything. Nice cool colors all around.

[happymonster]

Maybe you could add in simple 90 degree rotation - just by altering how the chunks are drawn?

The colours are beautiful! I take it the graphics with black outlines are placeholders? Because they don't fit the style of the rest of the artwork.

[goshki]

The slicing mechanic is a really nice touch.

[DiscordGames]

Maybe you could add in simple 90 degree rotation - just by altering how the chunks are drawn?

The colours are beautiful! I take it the graphics with black outlines are placeholders? Because they don't fit the style of the rest of the artwork.

Yea, the 90 degree rotation may work OK. I'll have to play around with that.

And yea, the enemies are still my programmer-art placeholders. Tony has been trying his best to get all of my crap out of there

[Bandreus]

It's a huge improvement

I'm not sure about the 'adding red edges' part though. Maybe add more particles? Like, for some monsters might make sense to have blood splatters flying around.

What you should add is some more gfx, like a translucent slice-effect on successful hits. This is for better feedback on top of just looking great. The on-hit effect might change accordingly to weapon type as well (like for blunt weapons, etc.). That's used a lot in many kind of games, including latest 2d chapters of Castlevania series.

You might also want to try having pieces of broken chests/killed enemies to slowly fade (up transparency) as they fly through the air and see how that looks.

[DiscordGames]

It's a huge improvement

I'm not sure about the 'adding red edges' part though. Maybe add more particles? Like, for some monsters might make sense to have blood splatters flying around.

What you should add is some more gfx, like a translucent slice-effect on successful hits. This is for better feedback on top of just looking great. The on-hit effect might change accordingly to weapon type as well (like for blunt weapons, etc.). That's used a lot in many kind of games, including latest 2d chapters of Castlevania series.

You might also want to try having pieces of broken chests/killed enemies to slowly fade (up transparency) as they fly through the air and see how that looks.

Thanks! Totally agree with the hit effects, that's definitely been on my mind the last day or so. I'll talk to Tony and see what we can do.

Yea, I'm still undecided on what these pieces are going to do. For now they stay on screen until you switch rooms, but that may get messy..

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Today I'm continuing to optimize the sprite slicing, have some optimizing to do to the pixel particles as well, and finally trying to get back to the NPC stuff. I really need to do some contract work this weekend (booo!), so time to wrap up these loose ends!

[joedev]

That slicing looks awesome. How were you able to do that in XNA? From thinking about it I guess you would have to get the Color array from the texture and pull out the colors for each individual chunk. At that point do you create a new texture for each chunk using the color information? I guess you could draw a bunch of single pixels to build the chunk, but that would be a lot of draw calls.

I use XNA a lot and I'm just curious how you did it, it's a very cool effect. If you could give a few details into how it is done that would be awesome.