phiphoton

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Ninja Cherche - Fire Emblem Heroes

They finally gave her an alt after almost 6 years Regarding my gamedev stuff, I stepped back a bit from working on program/visuals and I'm working on overall mechanics/story and scoping my project properly. So far so good, it's going at a good pace

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My game is going to look like an interactive shitpost at this rate

btw regarding the current progress: It's been 2 months since I've been working on the battle system. It's functional but I have quite some visual/animations bugs so I'm not showing too much for now (I think you can see one or two of them if you're paying attention to the ui) + I want to actually add real attacks/enemies of the game to show you something close to final result. Anyway, I'm somehow far behind my initial schedule but I'm enjoying this a lot! Also I'm lacking experience so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Working an hour on animations for my game be like 5 minutes of putting things together and then the next 55 minutes "YOOOO IT GOES BOING BOING BOING" Currently working on combat visuals now that most of the battle system is done, finally gztting into the funny stuff haha

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Couldn't stop thinking about that since I heard Naga say "I bring bounty" in Fire Emblem Heroes

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Making some flashy box animation but there's nothing inside...

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Here's another post explaining the process of my last VFX. This teleport effect is abstract enough to be used in various cases, like the blue effect one looks like a waterdrop effect, kind of. So you can be quite creative with it.

I won't detail the whole process of the VFX, because I simply followed a Youtube tutorial by Grabriel Aguiar Prod. :"Unity 5 - Game Effects VFX - Teleport & Spawn"

You can check that if you're interested, and check his other videos on VFX. He uses the Particule System to do this, while I opted for the VFX graph. I chose this option because I like to set properties with the VFX graph and edit their values via script. Which is what I'm going to detail today.

I made this effect for the teleporter to exit a dungeon in my game. The effect will display differently depending on the situation:

- Nothing on the teleporter (Inactive)

- Player on the teleporter (Active)

- Player using the teleporter (Using)

These 3 states led me to define a state machine to play different animations.

The script switch states when Player enters/exits the trigger and when players press the button to use the teleporter.

An ExitState class only contains data that will be changed in the VFX and the Light2D object attached to the teleporter. I guess I could have used a struct here since I only have data but anyway 🤔

The only issue is that if I update directly the VFX with my states data, the animation won't be smooth. So I made some scripting to change some values gradually.

This was also the opportunity to use local functions. It's pretty handy here since I want some organization within my function, without polluting the whole class with functions that only serves the UpdateState.

I still put 2 functions outside of it to manage which values will change without/with transitions. If I want to change that in the future, I don't want to open the massive UpdateState function haha

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TELEPORTATION

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Thread about how I made the last Unity VFX I posted

It was made with the VFX graph (completely doable with the Particle System if you want to). The only change between the effects above is the spritesheet. I think that's pretty powerful how different feeling you can get with only this one change

In the VFX graph, set a constant spawn rate. Number is relatively low, we don't need too many particles showing at the same time. Then set the lifetime of the particle as a parameter so it can be changed in the Unity Inspector

A shorter lifetime will make the effect snappier. You can also change make the rate as a parameter to have more control. I just didn't think about changing that until now haha

I also set the angle for the X axis as a variable. My game is in 2D, but it's possible to change this parameter to angle the effect (90 degree = not visible). Angle on Z axis is randomly set between 0 and 360. It just rotate the sprite to have some variety

I also change the size and the color over time to make a wave effect. And I use the UV mode "Flipbook" to play an animation. The Main Texture is also set as a parameter to change the animation sheet.

This is the texture sheet I used for one of the effects. I wanted it to disappear over time. So I make some desintegration at each stage

If you want a tutorial about this kind of 2D animation, you can check "2DFX animation : Dissipation and dust" by Stylus Rumble on Youtube

The crazy stuff attached to "FlipbookSize" and "Set Tex index" is there to play the animation. Ngl it's way easier to do that in the particle system haha

You have now access to unlimited power! Nothing can stop you!

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Learning FX on Unity increased my power by 1000%!

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For the technical aspect:

- The dust and the grass particles are made with the Particle System. Nothing too fancy here.

- The smoke behind the character is made with the VFX graph. I followed a tutorial called:

"Unity VFX Graph - Stylized Smoke Tutorial" from the youtube channel Gabriel Aguiar Prod. (the best channel I know when it comes to Unity VFX)

- The flying pebbles was the hardest to implement. I put some screnshots of the script to illustrate the process.

I have a BoxCollider 2D with trigger. When a collider activates the trigger, it will apply some speed to the pebble to make it fly.

There are a bunch of variables that will move the pebble with some randomness (jump height, number of jumps, speed...). This way, it will make the movement more organic.

In the Move function, I initiallize all the parameters that will influence the pebble movement.

Then I'm using the DOTween library to handle the movement (translation, bounce, rotation,also fading sprites!). It's a plugin available for free on the Unity Asset Store if you are interested.

The script can be improved by turning the random values into variables so that you can edit them directly in the Unity Inspector. I personaly like it better hard coded since I don't have any use of it (for now?). And also it would make the code a huge mess with all those variables haha

I didn't add comment since I think the variables are pretty explicit, but if you have any questions, let me know!

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I spent some time on animation details lately.

By making the environment more responsive to your presence, I'm pretty sure it will make the experience more enjoyable for you!

Don't know if you noticed it since it's quite subtle, but walking on grass triggers some particles.

The inspiration comes from Kirby and the Forgotten Land. Love that game <3