Giants is being made using Unity which has a pretty amazing particle effect system. Particles add another layer of depth and polish to the existing art of the game, and are quite fun to implement.







Here are some of the different types of particle effects we’ve created for Giants:



1. Velocity Over Time





The chimney smoke particle (as seen here coming out of the player’s house) is actually quite an easy particle to create. It uses this single triangle asset:which appears at a random rotation, size, and transparency as it emits from the start point (behind the chimney stack). As it comes out of the chimney, it rotates in a random direction, scales up in size and then down again, and loses transparency the further it gets away from the house. It also uses the attribute “Velocity over Lifetime” on both the X and Y axis which gives it that nice “S” curve.

The butterfly particles actually use a particle system attribute called “Texture Sheet Animation” which allows you to use a sprite sheet to create animations.



This is the sprite sheet:

This is what it looks like when it animates:The effect of butterflies floating on the wind is created with similar attributes used for the chimney smoke particle effect (colour over time + velocity over time + texture sheet animation).We use a similar effect for the flame Giant, except its sprites randomize between 10 sprites as opposed to 2 sprites:



3. Sub Emitters

Sub emitters are something we’re still playing with. It essentially takes a particle and then creates sub-particles upon “death”. An example of this is a rain effect we have for a giant we haven’t revealed yet (shhhh!) wherin the rain particle falls down and bursts, creating a splash effect.





4. Heat Effect





Another cool effect is the heat effect that Kris worked on. He wrote a really awesome and in-depth devlog post about it that you can read about here.





These are just a few examples of particle effects we’re playing with for Giants. If you’re interested in learning more about Unity’s particle systems I absolutely recommend checking out their tutorials



— Gabby (UI/UX Designer & Artist)