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On-contact melee visual effect ideas

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by JasonWIR, Apr 5, 2011.

  1. JasonWIR

    JasonWIR

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    I am looking for simple ideas on how to show contact when in melee combat. I have a combat system done. You can hit the mob, he will knock back about a meter, but the combat still feels a little stiff. I think part of that is my animation on knock-back, and part of it is I need some kind of visual effect that tells you contact has been made and makes you feel good about the hit. Something that flashes or a burst of color.

    Does anyone have any suggestions for adding some kind of simple visual effect when the you land a hit?
     
  2. niosop2

    niosop2

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    Jul 23, 2009
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    Really depends on the kind of game. Some possibilities:

    - Slow down time for a second
    - Shockwave type effect
    - Sound can have as much impact as visuals
    - A scantily clad cheerleader in the corner of the screen that jumps and cheers (and causes jiggles in her jiggly bits) when you make contact.
     
  3. JasonWIR

    JasonWIR

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    It is an ARPG and I want to keep it simple. I am just learning so I don't think I am quite ready for time distortion fields.

    I was thinking something with particles. Never used them, but they seem promising here.
     
  4. andorov

    andorov

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    The people over at Dragon Age 2 did wonders with blood particles and camera shake on contact.
     
  5. PrimeDerektive

    PrimeDerektive

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    If you didn't want to go the blood route, I've always liked the big energy-looking slashes instead, sort of like this:



    You could probably tweak the crap out of the standard assets sparks particle prefab to stretch out the particles to achieve something similar.
     
  6. JasonWIR

    JasonWIR

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    @andorov: Camera shake is a great idea and very easy to do!! I will have to see if I can make it feel good when in combat!

    @legend411: I love the energy slashes. I am not sure how to obtain that. I will play around with that tonight. Do you happen to know of any good tutorials using particles?

    @meh11: That is a good idea, but I am not that fond of blood. Also my only bad guys right now are skeletons. :)

    Thanks. If you have any more ideas let me know. :)
     
  7. PrimeDerektive

    PrimeDerektive

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    Take the default spark prefab and play around with a bunch of stuff. In particular, make sure you tweak some of the velocity vars for a lot of x and z velocity to get it to emit on the horizontal plane, and make sure in the particle renderer you set stretch particles to "stretch" and increase the length scale.
     
  8. HolBol

    HolBol

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    Wow, just played about with this myself- it's amazing what you can make :O!
     
  9. Quietus2

    Quietus2

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    Try a normal mapped particle based distortion effect at the point of impact.
     
  10. PrimeDerektive

    PrimeDerektive

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    Oh man, distortion effects are always awesome too.
     
  11. Sammual

    Sammual

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    Can you post an example?

    Thanks,
    Dan
     
  12. n0mad

    n0mad

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    Last edited: Apr 6, 2011
  13. PrimeDerektive

    PrimeDerektive

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    There are a couple heat distortion shaders you can find on the forums (they require pro though). You could probably use one of those on a sphere to get something like that. That, or tweak the shockwave from the detonator package.