Hey folks! It’s been quite a while since the launch of our open development build, while we’re actively developing our game, we’d also liked to share some of the interesting contents and topics during the development!
We gonna start off with the special effects as our very first topic, it’s one of our major strength and from there you can see how we paired character abilities with visual effects.
As a multiplayer sports game that primarily based on real-time physics, one of the most important thing for us is to synchronize the visual effects so it does not conflict all the major elements of the gameplay.
Here we use one of our cool character ‘Lang’ as an example. Since he’s one of the faster and more agile characters, the special effects we used must match with his personal traits. The gentle breeze that follows the movements of his arms when he punches and the leaves that fall in the special effects indicate the speedy aspect of the character.
When tackling, this time instead of breeze the flow of wind turns into a blast, with the sense of layering players can be started to feel the flexibility of this character.
Lang’s ultimate ‘eye of the storm’ is a large range, distracting ability that can dominate the field for a good few seconds. When designing its special effects we wanna make sure it does not visually block the character itself, while still showcasing the power of the abilities. In which we used high colour saturation so that players can clearly distinguish the special effects and character.
We also demonstrated the design ideology of our special effects from other aspects of the SBT, including the items. In an item called ‘bomb trap’, we added a few different colours and adjusted the colour saturation. Those colourful glowing lights make the item almost impossible to ignore and added a sense of mystery into it.
The expressions were largely enhanced after adding halo effects with some basic designs. It worked out like a surprise for us and I highly recommend using it.
It’s absolutely crucial for players to be able to clearly separate special effects and characters. Since SBT is a fast-paced game, to provide better in-game experiences we tweaked our special effects a little bit, with higher saturation rate than the characters.
About the texture, using textures directly from the photo will result in extra details and
cause unnecessary visual distractions. Therefore, we hand draw all the effects and combined softer lines with shape motions. We believe this can decrease the number of visual interruptions and improve in-game experiences.
I believe that’s all we can disclose about the special effects for now, hope you found it interesting and let you have a better understanding of the game! Also let us know if you have good suggestions for topics, and don’t forget to play some buckyball!