GFX: Nicer small explosion / blue sparks for 2.0

[eRe4s3r]

Yes, its that time of the year again! 

With the addition of sparks and animated small explosions here is my little overhaul of that section of the game. As with all my effect mods these blend nicely with the BG - especially with darker nebula bg try it out ^^

Changes
Explosion/Ember/1.png to 4.png with own effect replaced, sparks are now blue, pulsate, glow nicely
Explosion/Small/1.png to 11.png with own effect replaced, these are tiny reddish explosions that glow out and nearly perfectly blend out - these are the things you see when ships are hit or when forcefields are hit

This is mainly close-up graphical fluff - it does increase resolutions of ember sprite by 2 (so the sprites are slightly off-axis, this is intentional!)

Install - the folders in MOD folder to into AI War\Images\Explosion

As always with these mods, they have no game play performance or bug implications whatsoever They are just to beef these 2 effects up a bit

[x4000]

Nice stuff!  We will have to integrate these into the next release we do (not 2.0, too late for that).  You're certainly the man with the special effects!

[eRe4s3r]

Yeah but not that i put infinite time into them, its a 10 second kind of deal (renaming them takes longer than making rendering them!), i just noticed the small sprite had 4 duplicates at the end which made its transition to "nothing" very abrupt so this increases that effect and blend-out. I didn't actually know which effect that was before... 

actually i wrote the ember sprite was intentional.. but actually couldn't figure out how to render at 16x16 and have it still look good... 

But yeah, i think AI war can still look a LOT better without more cpu usage or art assets...

[x4000]

Very cool.

[eRe4s3r]

Well for me yes, but you have to code/tune it all

[x4000]

Yes, well.  I enjoy that, too.

[Baleur]

Love this little tweak
Will it be incorporated in the expansion next week?

eRe4s3r, any chance for a complete shot-gfx overhaul mod at one point? (especially thinking about the bombers, beam frigates and missiles)

[eRe4s3r]

IKP has already done these so you gotta ask x4000 ,p, speaking of shot effects As for these effects here (which are the small effect when a shot hits/sparks fly), i think X4000 was just a bit overworked when i posted this and forgot, i certainly hope they will be added sometimes

[Baleur]

IKP has done a shot effects mod already? I searched the forums for "GFX" and didn't find one so i just thought there wasnt any yet XD

[x4000]

IKP has done a shot effects mod already? I searched the forums for "GFX" and didn't find one so i just thought there wasnt any yet XD

Not that I'm aware of.  Our own artist has redone all of the shots from what they were prior to 2.0, though.  We might shift some from being sprite-looking to being more 3D-inspired, though.

[eRe4s3r]

No, .. i guess IKP just made additional shot sprites but there isn't really anything to remake with shots effects.. they are just indicators and besides the energy bombs (which i moded) i actually like them, well except the missile trails ;p

Besides i am not sure how to possibly improve them... I only nag and mod what i think i can do better

[I-KP]

It wasn't a mod per se, just a set of additional shot GFX to help give a bit of visual definition between the power of shots.  Every shot effect in the game is the same for each weapon type despite its power.  The below sprites offer a suggestion as to how shot power could be represented on a three tier scale, visually.

http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,2813.0.html

[Cydonia]

But yeah, i think AI war can still look a LOT better without more cpu usage or art assets...

Well that would be nice, but you shouldn't forget to give old machines a chance to run this game by turning all that nice graphics off. I can imagine that a few happy people bought this because they can't find any other good games their computer can handle. I'm always annoyed when new cool games are released but I can't run them on my computer because I can't turn the graphics low enough.
And others might just prefer the old look. For example I think after Monkey Island 2 the graphics got worse. You know what I mean^^

[Baleur]

As far as i know, changing a .png to another wouldnt affect preformance in any way, unless of course there would be more variations. But then again, +2 shot .png's compared to the +70 ships we get in the expansion (many of which consist of several .png's to be animated), those 2 extra shots loaded in memory wouldnt make much of a difference, in terms of memory usage

[x4000]

Generally that is correct.  Though, sometimes more challenging transparency can cause issues when it is rendering.  Not enough to notice most times, though.