Spell Graphics

Tarrei · Post by **Tarrei** » 05 May 2007, 17:36

Hi there. I like mana World very much, but I wondered why It's called Mana World? There are no spells or so. so I wanted to help out with some spell graphics, eventually i could make some more frames, but here are my suggestions:

Ice spell

Fire Spell
Some others will follow

Nickman · Post by **Nickman** » 05 May 2007, 22:28

The Ice-spell looks cool, the fire spell need some more detail in it I think

.

would be nice to see spells in TMW

Tarrei · Post by **Tarrei** » 06 May 2007, 08:00

Here is the next development stage:
Fire Frames:

Ice Frames:

Healing Frames:

Monster-Summoning-Spell Frames:

Post by **EJlol** » 06 May 2007, 08:14

You do know that they are thinking about a particle system?

Post by **Platyna** » 06 May 2007, 08:33

Graphics is brilliant. Anyway it should be posted in Graphic development. And particle engine was merged in the main branch.

Regards.

Post by **Crush** » 06 May 2007, 13:24

Hello Tarrei.

Your help is really welcome.

But note that the reason we haven't got any magic yet in the game is not only because we haven't got the necessary graphics yet but because it is not possible to implement any magic (at least not in the way we want to implement it) on the currently used server platform. That's one of the reasons we are currently programming a new server and before we are finished you won't see your graphics ingame.

But that of course doesn't mean that we don't want them. It would be really good to have some spell graphics around for testing when we start implementing magic.

Now for the graphics themself.

The fireball and the iceball look really good. You are already using PNG. That is good. But you should use an alphatransparent background instead of a black one. Also note that we need the graphics from at least 4 directions. 8 directions would be even better.

The ground circle and the bubble effect would maybe be better done with single particles and the new particle engine instead of a static animation. The particle engine will be part of the next version. You can already take a look at it when you download and compile the latest development version from our subversion directory when you know how. For more information about the particle engine see:
http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopic.php?t=2311
http://wiki.themanaworld.org/index.php/Particle_engine

Tarrei · Post by **Tarrei** » 06 May 2007, 16:41

I already have started making the things on transparent Background. I gonna edit this post...

I just recognized it's pretty hard.

Post by **Bjørn** » 06 May 2007, 23:13

Actually a black background is also fine for these effects, since it's trivial to convert a black background to transparency when there are no dark parts present in the sprite. In GIMP, you can go to Layer -> Transparency -> Color to Alpha..., and then choose black as the transparent color. For example:

Post by **Modanung** » 07 May 2007, 08:36

Also if our graphics engine were to support screen/add drawing mode a black background for fire effects wouldn't be a problem.

Post by **Rotonen** » 07 May 2007, 16:30

I think we should start to experiment on the visual style and feeling of magical effects with the particle engine. Especially how to make the effect subtly (or greatly) different varying on the fine details of the caster in question. I'd like magic to have a feeling of power in it. (Think of Fallout series critical hit death effects on a conceptual level: impact and sound integration is the key.)

Tarrei · Post by **Tarrei** » 07 May 2007, 18:38

So what now???? I'm a little... confused

Post by **Crush** » 07 May 2007, 19:50

Modanung wrote:Also if our graphics engine were to support screen/add drawing mode a black background for fire effects wouldn't be a problem.

I don't see a real reason to implement that.

Tarrei wrote:So what now???? I'm a little... confused

I would suggest you to create a front, back and left view of the fireball and the iceball on transparent background. They look great and I doubt that we won't find a use for them.

I think we could have them flying over the screen leaving a trail of particles behind.

Post by **Modanung** » 08 May 2007, 10:51

Crush wrote:
Modanung wrote:Also if our graphics engine were to support screen/add drawing mode a black background for fire effects wouldn't be a problem.
I don't see a real reason to implement that.

You will if it's implemented.

Post by **Crush** » 08 May 2007, 11:48

Modanung wrote:You will if it's implemented.

OK, let me explain you the difficulties in implementing new blitting modes.

-It would be very slow as blending modes like "screen" require some intense calculations for every single pixel and can not be hardware accelerated.
-We would have to program it for openGL and software separately.
-We would have to program those ourself and can not use a 3rd party library to do so.
-Because we can't rely on a 3rd party library for portability we have to take all the portablity issues in account like different byte order on some architectures, different color formats in different graphic modes and so on. Both for openGL and software.

And now you explain what we could do with different blending modes what we can't do with alpha transparency.

Tarrei · Post by **Tarrei** » 08 May 2007, 18:45

So, here we go with the left side < :

And to the right: