The Mana World Forums

I think it would be cool to have something like a ball that you can toss between players (similar the the Leather Ball on WoW) or if you could make snowballs and throw them. This could be used for mini-games or possibly some magic spells or other physical attacks (for example, throwing a potion or a rock). I think that animating the action in the way we animate things like player movement (via sprite sheets and xml) will not work. Maybe the particle engine could be used for this. I am not exactly sure of the possibilities of the particle engine, so maybe some one can comment more on this (Crush?).

The particle engine can only be used for objects that don't affect the gameplay.

That is a bit of a broad statement. It seems to me that the particle engine is used for effects and might be able to compute distances on the fly, so it could be used to make the visual effect that something is flying through the air, but I wouldn't consider that effecting gameplay. Maybe I am not understanding something fully...

well dr they are always lookin for developers....why dont you take your idea and make it happen and show them wrong. just a suggestion

Dr Wahl wrote:That is a bit of a broad statement. It seems to me that the particle engine is used for effects and might be able to compute distances on the fly, so it could be used to make the visual effect that something is flying through the air, but I wouldn't consider that effecting gameplay. Maybe I am not understanding something fully...

I would love to, but I (currently) lack the programming knowledge. I have been going through do-it-yourself online "how to write [insert language here]", but I'm still VERY noob.

Back to the topic at hand though.

I may not have communicated very effectively on my last post. From what I understand, the particle engine will be used for magical effects, correct? So would I do not understand how this would be any different. Because Crush said that it is not possible, I must assume that he is 100% correct (seeing as how he created the engine). I was simply trying to think of more ways to put the engine to work since it is one of the more impressive pieces of eye-candy TMW has to offer (at this state anyhow).

What Crush probably means is that the particle engine is just a client side effect. Since the particles position is not communicated to the server each client we'll see them at different positions making it not feasible to base player interaction on particles.

That makes sense. Thanks for clarifying Elven!