Game effects

[Sordid23]

Hey people!

me and some friend are makeing a small game just for fun, and since its like an rpg/platformish game, set in a fantasy-ish world, it would be nice to have some flashy magical effects(thing lightning/Fireball/waterblast.

Now i know that you make them using partical systems, animated textures and alpha maps. But i would like to have a tutorial that goes through the whole thing.

So if you have anny tutorials or just tips in general it would be greatly appreciated

[omnicypher]

one technique that might go a long way without any complex particle systems, is the animated alpha cylinder. lets say you have an animation of a character tossing somthing above his head and you want it to look like hes healing himself. all you have to do is make a cylinder around his lower half and enlarge the top of it. delete the top and bottom, then texture it with either parralell vertical lines, sparkles, fire, demonic symbols, or whatever energy your trying to make. then make a greyscale version for an alpha map (dont make any of it fully opaque, because it is only energy after all). you can also animate the mesh by spinning it, growing it vertically, enlarging the top of it, or a mixture of any of these and anything you can think of. then make a few variations of this and put them all together to get some kind of cool but simple rpg effect.

you can also save time by looking at references from final fantasy, dragonball, or super smash brothers. if you have super smash brothers, put it in practice mode on 1/4 speed and shoot the gun or charge an attack. youll probably see a few variations of what ive mentioned.

[Deto]

Another pretty 'new practice' or 'common practice' is projected effect like in WoW, goes nicely around the terrain forms etc