R49 Spell effects feedback

[mercy]

NotEye new speed is awesome!

Loose blood animation is superb! Easily the best effect currently. Hats off to the artist, who drew it, masterfully done! You should aim toward this quality while drawing some powerful, high level spells, like Death Ray: hand drawn - animate most frames, like the drawn explosion frames in Iron Giant.

Hit "red slash" and poisoned effects look nice & useful. Claw/slash animations are excellent!: Maybe increase red outline +1 pixel, because the really good looking tiny blood-drops aren't apparent. I only discovered the cool blood sprays by checking out the PNG animations.

Spell Effects feedback:

Invisibility is best!! Don't touch it, its perfect.
Cure light wounds is very nice.

Burning hands: since it is usually a fire spray looking like this .. player<<monster .. , the sprite frames - while played - should move towards the monster, beginning with tiny flames at the casters hand and gradually increasing sprite size then reaching the monster you can play an explosion: like a short distance flamethrower burn effect in a couple of frames.

1. All explosions - currently spell castings look too much like explosions - should be played at the end of the path of a missile: hitting the target. Currently all bolt explosions are played on the player sprite. Spell release effects should look like a thin soap-bubble expanding around the character, then popping.
Easier to do this with a golden shine, fading in ~ also increasing in size ~ then fading out behind the player character sprite, while the spell projectile itself - for example fire bolt - travels its fiery path and slams into a target then explodes.
It couldn't hurt creating bolt SLAM splashes: like "water splashing" in the spells color around the hit target with tiny multiple spell-splash residues traveling outward around the monster and disappearing.
.. edit: you already have a splattering "Fire explosion" looking good!

2. Magic Missile needs a traveling bouncing sizzling spell energy effect along a path - like the firebolt - to visualize BOUNCE, then exploding it is easy on target. Can you rotate & recolor the fire bolt fire-stream sprite to blue+red or golden color and draw it along a bouncing path?
..edit: I see the firebolt anim, of which a shorter "sizzling-line-of-fire" could serve as a magic missile bouncing stream.

3. Firebolt is very nice! The yellow particle effect - again this looks like exploding instead of releasing magical energy - on the character is overkill. It should be a golden aura slightly expanding from Player_Character_Sprite_Center and fading out there - as the firebolt itself travels.

Misc:
Finding secret doors should display an EYE icon quickly expanding and fading out and give some XP: maybe a floating "+5XP" text?

..edit: current PNG animation format is a good one. It seems you have covered this area well.

[shockeroo]

I don't like the way the spell runes animate at the moment. You get a big explosion of spell rune over your character, drawing the eye more than the spells themselves. The first time I cast burning hands I thought *I'd* exploded somehow.

I think the spell runes should have a much more subtle animation (possibly fading in, glowing, and fading out) instead of exploding over your character.

[sylph]

How about having the rune 'explode' over the target of the spell? Would that make more sense? Failing that, maybe just a more subdued, faded effect?

[mercy]

Simple:

1. Create animation frames only with the rune fading in then fading out: frames number 0 - 12
2. Create any animation frame relating to the firing of the spell, fire-trail, golden-ray or the current particle explosion looking thing: frames number 13 - 28
3. Move the current particle explosion-looking effects to the end: frames number 29 - 45

1. When casting the spell show the rune above the character play frames number 0 - 12
2. While you are doing this fire the spell too: play frames number 13 - 28 missile or bolt moving to target
3. Hitting the target, play the explosion anim: play frames number 29 - 45

Currently the magic missile is disturbing, since it is exploding on the character and not shooting / bouncing toward the target and doesn't explode right in the middle of the target.

[mercy]

Current runes are perfect inventory item icons
- You found a rune! Rune placed to inventory: you can see the rune there and cast it.

Otherwise all spell effects ought to be visualized a distinct way, like the current poisoned, sick, firebolt, lightning bolt animations.

[Ravenmore]

Thanks guys, this really helps!

You're very right that the spell effect hogs attention. The problem is that the "bolt" effect fires at the same time as the spell, which means it's over even before the spell's peak frames start.
With burning hands it totally makes it look like the fireball hits the PC, because the fireball appears first and only then you see the spell. Should be the other way around.

Will pass this on to the team, this requires a programmers' attention

[BenMathiesen]

I'm going to buck the trend here and say that I love the rune animation on the PC. Yes, the timing could be changed a little bit so that the rune fades out as the spell effect begins, but I'm really enjoying them and I don't think they detract from the spell.

The fire bolt looks really nice. I can't wait to see the other elemental effects and magic missile in action, as well as some of the rarer spells!

My only complaint so far is the red "slash" for injury. It's OK for melee (although somewhat redundant with the health bars), but I find it distracting when coupled with a spell effect.

The bleeding under the health bar is really cool.

I'm sure there's more stuff I haven't seen yet--I haven't had much time lately for playtesting.

[mercy]

Cure Wounds, Remove Curse, Strength of Atlas, Invisibility, all these in-place effects that don't require shooting monsters, look truly beautiful with the new spell icons.

[boat]

The flickering lights room looks amazing with the spells. Nice work!