The particle effects do this game a disservice

[BobTheJanitor]

This may be tangentially related, but Energy Pulse seems to have a larger hit box than the visual effect implies. I know you can shoot it between a couple of flying enemies and hit both, even though the 'wave' effect passes right between them. And also, it's almost impossible to aim it up hills or stairs. I think the area that it affects must shoot out with its base right near your feet, such that trying to shoot it up hill causes it to immediately impact on the ground in front of you. A larger graphic and perhaps one that fires a little higher up on your character might not go amiss.

[x4000]

This may be tangentially related, but Energy Pulse seems to have a larger hit box than the visual effect implies. I know you can shoot it between a couple of flying enemies and hit both, even though the 'wave' effect passes right between them. And also, it's almost impossible to aim it up hills or stairs. I think the area that it affects must shoot out with its base right near your feet, such that trying to shoot it up hill causes it to immediately impact on the ground in front of you. A larger graphic and perhaps one that fires a little higher up on your character might not go amiss.

The hitbox is actually inscribed in this one.  And it's not "almost" impossible to shoot it up narrow passages -- it's literally impossible, because it's wider than those openings.

[BobTheJanitor]

The hitbox is actually inscribed in this one.  And it's not "almost" impossible to shoot it up narrow passages -- it's literally impossible, because it's wider than those openings.

Well it's not just narrow passages. Even hills with nothing but sky above them are nigh impossible to shoot up while standing on the ground. I know it's not a wall-hugger like Ball Lightning, but still, it always seems to pop right in front of me unless I aim closer to vertical.

[x4000]

I probably should make it a wall hugger.

[BobTheJanitor]

Well I do enjoy curving Ball Lighting shots around angles and zapping things. Makes me feel like I pulled off a trick shot.

Hey, there's an idea. Any chance of a ricochet spell any time soon?

[x4000]

Sounds like a good idea for mantis.

[stblr]

Has there been any though given to allowing the player to customize spells, or contruct their own from a set of options? Allowing fireball to ricochet, for example, or even something as simple as letting the player change the color of spells. This is obviously a big of a tangent from the topic of the thread but I think that could be pretty interesting (and probably a nightmare to balance).

[x4000]

Has there been any though given to allowing the player to customize spells, or contruct their own from a set of options? Allowing fireball to ricochet, for example, or even something as simple as letting the player change the color of spells. This is obviously a big of a tangent from the topic of the thread but I think that could be pretty interesting (and probably a nightmare to balance).

Spell crests do add various abilities to combine spells and add options like homing, etc.

[stblr]

As a programmer it's clear that the damaging part of a spell is the particle spawner, not the trail but intuitively it looks like the part where the particles get large is the main body of the spell. Most players aren't programmers and are likely used to seeing projectiles that have the biggest and brightest effects around their hitbox.

I'm going to reserve proper comment on the following until my in-game field of view improves but it occurs to me that (in at least some cases) enemies don't telegraph their different attacks particularly far in advance either. Fast-moving, wide-spread attacks with such little warning mean I take rather a lot of damage in even relatively easy engagements with projectile-firing enemies.

The giant skelebots are actually an exception because their timing is relatively easy to learn and dodge around.

Lightning Espers and Amoebas, on the other hand...

I haven't fought any recently but the giant skelebot's melee attack range seemed very hard to estimate since it expands pretty far beyond any visible part of the sprite and even the one frame used for the attack doesn't extend as far as the range.

If it's assumed that the emitter is the only thing that does the damage, then we run into a few problems right away:

1) Right now emitters aren't even drawn for the spells we've talked about in this thread.

2) Particles go from a visual tip-off to just plain unnecessary, or worse, they obfuscate what's happening while communicating nothing relevant to the player.

3) Having the emitter ALWAYS be the only damaging part of the spell nullifies a whole slew of valid gameplay possibilities. There wouldn't be opportunies where, say, all the particles do damage (toxic gas, for example).

[zebramatt]

From the current (unreleased) patch notes:

• Improved ability for code to set angle of emission of particles from particle emitters.
• --This allows for various spells, such as fireball for instance, to have a narrower emission profile.
• Shrunk the apparent size of the tidal pulse and the amoeba shots so that there is less splashing outside of the core collision box.
• --Also vastly improved their performance during this, cutting their number of draw calls down to 20% of what it was before.

• Made it so that the particle effect behavior definitions are defined in an external xml file that is loaded at runtime. This xml file can be reloaded at any time by pressing Ctrl+F4. This makes it way faster to edit and tune particle effects, and makes it so that modders can actually tune more of the effects than just the raw images.
• Fireballs and ball lightning have had their visual behavior completely reworked to be less overwhelming of the screen and to be easier able to tell where the actual projectile is.
• The forest rage visuals have been completely redone.
• Creeping death has gotten the particle makeover, and is now much smaller to match it's collision box better as well as looking nicer and using half the draw calls it previously did.
• The skelebot and NPC sniper shots have now gotten the visual upgrade/clarity/shrinkage treatment.
• Shrunk down the energy pulse collision box a bit so that it's easier to shoot through small gaps (and possible to shoot through some passages at all.
• Fixed up some issues with very slow-moving particle balls that would make their particles actually offset from where their collision box was. For amoeba shots against a wall, as one example, this would prevously be an issue.
• Greatly improved the death smoke visuals of the launch rock spell.
• Shrunk the trail of launch meteor, and got that also being more efficient to render.
• Lightning esper shots are now vastly smaller to match their collision box, as well. And correspondingly more efficient, too.
• Completely redid the visuals for the shrink shot and seize shot.

[Jerebaldo1]

Chris, you're actually externalizing particle behaviors? Suhweet! That is such a good sign

[x4000]

Chris, you're actually externalizing particle behaviors? Suhweet! That is such a good sign

Yep -- adding in new kinds of particle images isn't possible at this point, but the particle effects are completely xml based.  Or, will be -- bleh, this is a project that has taken all day and I'm still only like 30% done in terms of all the particle effects the game has.  But this will make it a lot faster for me to add good-looking particle effects, too.  And the new style of these things is really far superior to the way they were before, I have to say.

[Spork]

Can't wait to play the next update

The game was fun to begin with, and really gets better after each update. I could easily pay 20 $ for the game in it's current state. Sure, it lacks of content but I have still had enough fun with it to justify the 10 $ price tag. But I did not know this after I bought it of course.

[eRe4s3r]

xml based spell effects also has the added + that you can easily extend the particle system with new features without breaking all your older spells again and again 

Well this ought to be one of those "game-changing" updates for sure ;P At least in terms of "feel" of the spells

[x4000]

xml based spell effects also has the added + that you can easily extend the particle system with new features without breaking all your older spells again and again 

The way that I had the stuff done before in code, that was already true; but, it's a nice way to do things.

Well this ought to be one of those "game-changing" updates for sure ;P At least in terms of "feel" of the spells

Yeah, they definitely feel really different.  It's interesting, because even something like lightning espers (or any of the bosses that fire projectiles) really does feel very different.  I always know exactly where the collision boxes are anyway, but I find it vastly easier to dodge these things now even so.  And a number of the spells just plain look better, even though I've done no new art for this update.  It's all just animating and combing the stuff better in the particle system I'd already created months ago.  But now it's way faster for me to create new effects, too, which is a plus.