Effects

By Jordan Calderwood This week I focused my efforts on creating several visual effects used to give the player information about gameplay events. The first effect I did was a simple damage animation. I used a geometry shader to translate the characters' polygons outwards in the direction of their plane normals and quickly back in. The result is a kind of glitchy, retro-feeling animation. The next effect I did was a simple ghost trail effect to show when the player is using their dash ability. I accomplished this by saving the player's world matrices from 5 previous frames and then drawing the player instanced with the matrices. I color all of the player's pixels white during those frames, and I plan on making 5 variations of the effect to show the difference between the different levels of upgrade the player can unlock for the dash ability. Next, I used a geometry shader to draw thicker lines around our cover cubes to make their highlight stand out more. It works okay, but there are a few glitches I need to work out still.