Posts tagged effects
Energy Blades are Go!
Jun 28th
There was a point where our team had an epiphany. It occurred to us that since our player’s ship has a rotatable axle to mount weapons on, that if said weapon were a stick of some sort, one might feel an inclination to just smack approaching enemies. So it was on this day, boy and girls, that we decided to toss in a few melee weapons. The Energy Blade shown in the pictures above lets you swing at enemies in 360 degrees to slice and dice any opposition in your path, yet still 100% controllable by you in the same way you can manually aim guns. The Energy Blade is only one of the many melee weapons we’re planning on adding, and what’s cool is that equipping this weapon shifts gameplay quite dramatically. Since you’re giving up the range of more normal projectile weapons, using the blade effectively means you’ll need to quickly dart around the combat area to get up close and personal with enemies. It’s dangerous, but who can resist the pure thrill and allure of a space fighter blowing things up with a sword? I contend that you cannot, good sir or madame.
Let’s Talk Style
Sep 28th
What’s this you might ask? Well. it started out as just a little internal color scheme test, but it really showed the style we’re aiming for so I figured I should toss it online. We really want HEAVEN VARIANT to have a style of its own so we’re using a really heavy-handed cartoon aesthetic. The explosions and sparks were animated specifically to look as if they were from an older mid-80′s cartoon or anime. It remains to be seen if we’ll use cel-shading or not on 3D objects, but nothing’s off the table.
A stylized look will give our team a lot of options for over-the-top weapons, characters, and scenarios, plus it allows us to be a little more playful with the characters and story. To say the least, it’ll be a good time, and hopefully it’ll look good.
Oh, and just for the record these are all fully animated in-game assets, but this particular image was not rendered in the game’s engine! Staying honest! The backgrounds, the explosions, the sparks, the particles; all of them are in-game assets right now. So that means the actual game will look similar if not identical to this image.
