I’m continuing to work on the FX blueprints to add more features, and will create more particles/sounds in further updates. I’m planning on another revamp pass on some of the FX, such as the liquid impacts.

Fracture Effects

These aren’t too dissimilar from the impact FX themselves. They explode outwards in a sphere instead of upwards from an impact normal. But they share common materials and textures with the impact FX.

Grenade Launcher

The explosion is made up from several components with the main flame and smoke created with sprite sheets.

I take particular care to ensure the smoke naturally dissipates as opposed to simply fading out the alpha (which I see quite often with smoke sprite sheets).

The shrapnel projectiles themselves are using the same system as the bullets, with additional trails enabled. This means they can ricochet and once the penetration system is complete, will be able to pass through objects to inflict further damage.

Ricochet System

Ricochets weren’t too tricky. The projectiles simply bounce but there are modifiers for different materials that determine if a bullet should ricochet depending on the impact angle and material type.

In update 1.2 I’ve added a data table system with all the parameters for setting the properties that determine which materials ricochet more than others. Soil and sand are very difficult to ricochet off, whereas metal or rock will deflect much more often. These same data tables are also used to define what effects to spawn and other material properties.

How Do Effects Influence General Performance?

They are designed to be used in game straight out of the box, so there shouldn’t be any need to optimize for general modern hardware. All the additional features such as particle spawned decals and sub FX are entirely optional and can be disabled in the FX blueprints spawn variables.

James McWilliams, Game Developer

Interview conducted by Kirill Tokarev.

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