Particles!

Three blogs in one day might be excessive, but its just passed midnight so I guess I'm ok.

So then ladies and gentlemen. One thing I have not blogged about as of yet is the project I'm working on with some guys from university for our "Team Project" module.

Quck brief. Team of 8. Half programmers, half designers. 8ish months. 1 game prototype.

We, "Team C" have been building our game for a while now and it's finally coming together quite well. The game is called Quintessence, which roughly translates from latin as "five elements" of the "fifth element".

Quintessence is a Marble Blast / Super Monkey Ball style game where the player must control the ball, rolling it from the start of a level to the finish, as quickly as possible. The challenge is added in the form of elements. The ball is transformed into different elements by rolling onto "Altars" which change the current element in order for the player to overcome obstacles such as hedges, water, and brick walls.

There are 5 elemental balls in total, each with their own characteristics in terms of weight, speed, acceleration, grip and visual style. They are Neutral, Fire, Water, Earth and Air.

Fire burns hedge, Water(ice) freezes water, and Earth smashes wall. Air is just floaty-light!


So that's the game, and I've been working on a particle engine this weeks which I adapted from a 2D particle engine tutorial into a fully 3D version. :)

The particle system is to be used for fire effects, ice and snow particles, chunks of rock, water splooshes and much more.

The visual style is cartoony and we are in the process of redrawing almost all of the texture to make it even more so, hence the blobby cartoony style of the fire. At last, here is a video of the effect.

Since making that video earlier in the week I have created a fireworks effect for when the player finishes the level, and snow and ice particles that fly off the Water(ice) ball when it rolls.