Impact Effects

It is incredibly important to the combat sensation in an action game that it feels really amazing when you hit something else with your weapon. Aztez is no exception. Typically, a specific combination of visual cues is used to communicate successful impact and I have created a piece of Unity content that showcases the different effects Aztez will use. You can press z to perform an attack to see it in action, but you can also push keys 1 through 0 to view the individual effects. This isn't a real attack using our combat code, it's just a hacked together demo, which is why it looks ridiculous when you mash on the z button.

Here is a breakdown of the individual effects:

1. Attack animation. Has a few frames of anticipation before throwing all of the upper body weight into a hefty attack. I find with attacks like this that the harder you swing the character's weight around the more brutal the attack will look.

2. Hit animation. The part of the character's body that gets hit must be quickly and painfully jacked around in order to feel good. There is some silly exaggeration in the way the poor character's head gets whipped around that helps drive the pain home. Also, I find it helps a lot (especially in games with lots of enemies on the screen) to flash the enemy a solid color very quickly to reinforce to the player exactly whom they have struck.

3. Sword Swing. The widely utilized and easy method of communicating fast weapon movement. A large, animated shape indicates the movement of the weapon. In recent years this effect has been done with polygon "ribbons", but in Aztez I am using the traditional method of hand drawn frames.  Typically this shape is based on the general shape and size of the weapon in use, but sometimes it's done with a thinner trail that emerges from the tip of the weapon. When this effect is done well using proper animation principles, it will singlehandedly provide most of the charm of attacks.

4. Sword Dust. This effect is much more subtle, but it emphasizes the motion of the attack. It mostly resembles a layer of dust being thrown off the blade, hence the name. You can see this being put to great use in Diablo 3, which has AMAZING effects all around and has been a source of great inspiration. If you want to scrutinize some of them for yourself, go to their movie section and download the gameplay trailer. You can use Quicktime or VLC to scrub through frame by frame and see for yourself what kind of techniques they employ (you special effect aficionados should be doing this all the time anyway).

5. Successful Impact Effect. An abstract effect used to communicate that something has successfully struck something else. Very popular in beat-em-ups and fighting games alike, weapon-based or otherwise. This effect occurs at the point in space that the weapon connects with the target.

6. Sword Slash. Used to indicate that a blade of some kind has made contact with a body. This effect does not typically occur at the point in space that the weapon connects with like the Impact Effect does, but instead occurs in the general area. The most important aspect of this effect is the "direction" in which it occurs; it should be aligned to the angle at which the weapon struck the target. In this demo it's only occurring horizontally since the attack motion is so horizontal, but in the actual game it will occur much more dynamically because of the natural attack variety in combos.

7. Blood Explosion. There are actually two different things going on this effect: tiny blobs that retain their circular shape and tiny motion-stretched blobs. The way a thick liquid like this spews out of a point is very distinct; there should be enough stickyness and viscosity to be clumpy but the motion must break it apart realistically. I still feel like this isn't quite there yet and it will definitely get refined down the road.

8. Blood Splatters. This effect is very simple; I'm simply creating a few flat sprites in slightly randomized locations. There are two different pieces of art for the sake of variety: one very misty sprite and one that more resembles a pool of blood.

9. Ground Dust. Not terrifically realistic, but adds to the sense of impact and motion. I'm simply using this effect to imply that the attack was so brutal and hard that it blasted some dust off the ground the way a helicopter would.

10. Camera Shake. Pretty self-explanatory. A good camera shake contributes hugely to the feeling of power if done right. It might be a little strong in this particular case, but bear with me as I push these effects as far as I can.

Of course these will improve over time and may change entirely. I'm aware of the fact that some of this might not hold up when there are lots of enemies on the screen getting the shit beat out of them and I might have to rework some of the effects so they stand out or don't distract the player. But the proof of concept you see here was successful in that we know we can make something feel brutal and awesome.