I've been recently facing a problem with character's skills appearance. I have the animation of sword swinging but I haven't managed to successfuly do anything else.
I would like to check when the sword hits a monster which would call a "being hit" animation for the monster. Also some swinging and flash effects would be useful. Or maybe should I use particle system to additional visual effect?
Is there any video tutorial for that? I have no idea where to start.
About finding out when the sword hits, in my case, I added an event in the animation (edit animation, and click a point on it's timeline to add an event at the desired moment of the animation - when the sword reaches forward for ex) and then in the character's update check if that even is happening in the current frame then do all your computations (in my case, check if a nearby char is in front of me at a short distance, and if so, it takes damage; add effects, sounds, and whatever else happens when the sword hits here). I hope this helps!
I would also point you to the swing trail effect tutorial.
If you have bloody massacre, there's also the code for blood dripping when the bullet hits you. Didn't check it yet, I think it's just some particles effects when the hit occurs. Or at least that's what I would do.
Looking at their web site you'd need to integrate their particle engine into Esenthel using their SDK ... no idea what the price on this engine is though ... it looks and sounds expensive!!!
Some particle apps like this allow you to export particle sequences as a series of animated images which can be used as animated billboards etc. Depending on what you are using them for that can be quite effective! Not sure if this app supports that though.
Well, I'm still at the stage of looking for an editor that would allow me
to use such particles in the game. I've found lots of videos showing
amazing particle effects for skills such as:
(03-07-2014 02:14 PM)Kiekos Wrote: Why doesn't EE have such an editor?
I guess only Greg can answer that
(03-07-2014 02:14 PM)Kiekos Wrote: How do I import particle effects from external apps to make them work in EE?
Generally speaking you can't. Most of these third party editors rely on using their own particle system which in order to use them in your games would require they are integrated into Esenthel via a provided SDK
Some allow export of effects as a series on animated images as I mentioned previously which would allow animated billboard usage but that's not nearly as effective as having the particles themselves!
If you want third party tools operational in Esenthel then you need to integrate them, and the best people to tell you how to do that are the tool developers themselves.
Otherwise, its down to you to manipulate the existing Esenthel particle system to get the effects you desire but all systems have limitations. Third party suppliers tend to specialize in what they are providing so generally have better features.
I've not played around with particles in Esenthel but the support in terms of the API for them looks pretty good.
Bare in mind some of those effects (especially in the third link you showed) are in fact probably combinations of animated images and particles combined as a single effect.
However, creating the algorithms to control complex movement/drawing of particles in real time is not simple and this is where Editor type support definitely helps.
Having things like attractors and deflectors can also really aid in controlling movement and I don't think there is any support in Esenthel 'out of the box' for those.
But a lot of those exploding or spiralling type effects are just down to applying control over the initial positions of the particles and their life span, application of mathematical constants or functions to velocity and acceleration to control the spacial movement and manipulation of properties like glow/colour etc in real time.
Applying animated images can be surprisingly effective in situations though. Take a look at this fairly simple example from my Kingdom Of Soul development as an example (towards the end of the vid). Not sure I would have liked to have created that from scratch using Particles without some elaborate Editor with a lot of built in particle manipulation ability:
Yeah its just a flat plane oriented towards the player at all times (billboard) with a series of animated images mapped to it, no particles. However, the underlying series of images was created using a particle editor and simply exported as a sequence of images such that they tile into a continuous repeating animation.
The billboard in the video was static but of course you can move them around. I use this particular one for cast spells and normally mix in some particle based colored smoke trails which follow the billboard and an impact starburst animation.
Regarding the holographic images tutorial, I'm not familiar with that and not at my dev machine right now so can't really comment on that.
