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[lithander]

I'm currently looking for ideas how to get good looking blood effects into an hack&slay sprite based game. So I guess the blood needs to be a sprite animation too. I'm just not sure how to find/pixel/generate/simulate/fake that kind of effect. I've run accross a couple of explosion sprite generators a while ago... has anyone seen something similar for blood?

[Loren Schmidt]

One type of blood effect that I really like works like this:

• Create an emitter at the point of impact, aimed outward from the character.
• For a brief period of time after the impact, continuously create blood particles.

What you'll get is a sort of fluid spurt of particles. Give the particles enough initial velocity that they arc outward a bit, rather than just falling straight down.

This might not be a good fit for a lower fidelity, more pixelly game. I'm not sure what sort of feel you have going.

[Kramlack]

If you need ideas, you could always look at Metal Slug for some different ways that blood sprays. I mean, that game pretty much has everything from exploding, spraying, streaming, you name it.

There are some examples from Sprite Database on just the blood, if you want to see it on characters, you'll have to check other character specific sheets.

Like Sparky said, I'm not sure what sort of feel you're going for, but I hope this helps.

[ben2theedge]

Here's some good references:
http://www.lucidmovement.com/?p=171

http://www.lucidmovement.com/?p=104

http://www.lucidmovement.com/?p=70

http://www.lucidmovement.com/?p=168

http://www.lucidmovement.com/?p=128

[lithander]

Thanks for your input, guys! You posted some really helpfull links!

What feel am I going for? Some years ago I really enjoyed playing Diablo II. Beside all the long term goals of leveling your char or getting equipment the gameplay was just fun. And that was (in my opinion) mostly because the visual feedback was rewarding - a monster might have had a 5 frame walking animation but a 30 frame death animation - the graphics really supported the "hack&slay" feeling! I think that was one of it's main USPs.

In Diablo II the blood&gore vfx were prerendered sprites. I'm just pondering how you could get the feel of fluids and physics (the blood splashes caused by a sword should look like fluids and reflect the direction, speed and angle of the hit for example) without having to produce sprites in a high profile programm like Maya or 3ds Max by specialized artists.
It's not so much about the specific look&feel of a specific game (if you can do the vfx sprites realistically you can always downsample, reduce the collor palette or add cartoon shading...) but about how to create it as an independent game developer.

Imagine a game like Boxhead with realistic blood effects that matched the visual style!

At the moment I'm just brainstorming... especially the video's on lucidmovement were great to watch but also showed how complex fluids actually behave. I just think this is is an interesting topic I'd like to explore further...

[Jad]

Err. How about you draw it : D? Blood splatter effects and the like is one of the funnest things to animate ever, I think, pixel art-wise O: Anyhow drawing it frame-by-frame works fine if you've got the skills!

[Chris Pavia]

Not to pimp my own game, but I've got some simple sprite based blood effects in my project which you can check out here:
http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=6647.0

It may be too simple for what you're looking for though, but it's a pretty easy solution that looks decent.

[Loren Schmidt]

Ben- those videos are gorgeous. I'm bookmarking that site.

Lithander- I like where you're going with this. I completely agree that good visceral feedback for player actions (with or without blood) is one of the most important things to get right. I would love to see any results that come out of your train of thought here.

[superflat]

Hey man I put a silly amount of effort into the blood spurters on this game:
http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=1423.msg31807#msg31807

It has severed limbs to which you can attach arteries.  I use a technique similar to the one described above, making sure to spawn the limb pieces in the right places... For the arteries I use a sine-wave modified by a timer, and if the sine-wave is greater than 0, it shoots blood particles at a speed determined again by the sine wave, in the direction of the artery.