Shiny

We wanted to give you guys a bit of insight into what goes on behind the visual effects in I Hate Running Backwards.

There are a lot of effects in the game and as a first rule we try to make them functional and visually appealing.

The problem

Functionality and visual appeal are subjective terms and it often boils down to us having to iterate on different effects to mold them into what they need to be in the end.

The first part we work on is functionality. In this step we try to give the effects context in the world. If we're talking about weapons we try to make the effects give visual feedback on the speed of the bullets or the radius of explosions.

After that we work on visual appeal. We try to make something unique for every new weapon or character we introduce to the game.

Here is an example of the two parts working together to make a portal effect.

First we made the colors of the middle part of the portal more saturated than the outer parts to attract the eye towards the middle part of the portal.

Than we added the sparks that indicate to the player the part of the portal he can interact with.

To spring the portal to life we added the less saturated parts the lights on the ground infront of the portal and the small pulsating crystals. When it all comes together we get something like this:



Iteration

Ahh yes the bane of game development. Well it is a huge part of effects design.

For the next example we have a flame explosion that stays on the ground after the initial impact.

In its first iteration the effect didn't have a good representation of the damage radius and we had to redesign the effect to make it easier for the player to see where the danger is.

We added a flaming circular indicator and the overall strength of the effect got a visual upgrade. We increased the duration of the flame to show where the danger is and it also indicates the duration of the effect. In the end we added some ground cracks with less saturation just for contrast the intensity of the core.

Old Effect:


New Effect:


The difference is sublte but it gives the player more information than the first iteration.

Effect Layering

We usually layer different textures to make more complex effects. For example to make the above flame effect we had to layer different shapes like: the small flame licks, sparks, ground cracks and the radius indicator circles that have lava like scrolling noise moving over them.

And as a last treat we'll show you a breakdown of our lvl up effect.



And when it all comes together we get something that looks like this:




Thanks guys and stay tuned we'll share more cool stuff soon :)