Hi!

 

I saw the thread about animations and reckoned that a similar thread for feedback about spell/particle effects was in demand.

In the 2nd Live Booth Twitch vid, I agree with the interviewer that the fireball effect was beautiful for instance.

However, like half a minute later, the wizard casts a lightning jolt, and it looks not very good at all. It retains its lightning shape like a stiff bolt-net as it flies through the air.

 

In essence, this topic is for nitpicking of that kind and your general opinion about FX!

Just an idea: Perhaps the forum moderators can glean new beta build topics like this, pre-launch the beta subforum a bit, and move all these kinds of topics over there?

My reaction to the lightning bolt was much as yours.

 

Then I remembered how they look in the IE engine, and immediately felt better. They are very IE-ey.

Aha! I had forgotten about that. I must check that later. I still have IWD2 installed. Hmm, regardless, it could be slightly more varied and alive, coz several effects that we've been shown actually are.

FX is actually pretty good. Nice and sensible, not too flashy, no overuse of blur or lights and proper FX on the characters as well.

 

Hit reactions are missing on enemies though.

 

Haven't seen every spell, but at least we don't have these huge flashy circles and stuff like we've seen previously.

Edited August 14, 201411 yr by Sensuki

Yeah! NWN2 was ripe with flashy glyph circles and pentagrams! We don't want that back.

I think they changed the Knockdown effect too as per my complaint

I dunno, I kinda like the flying ball of lightning, though it just looked like it traveled slowly compared to the whooshing 'magic missile' attack.

I think the lightning spell should hit the enemies and then we could see it splashing/running through the enemies body. I think that would be really cool.

Same with the missile attack...seeing it just disappear wasn't as nice. If it splashed would be a nice way for us to know that the enemy was effectively hit

the Missile spells need to come from the wand, not the character's navel.

I'm trying to find the video mentioned by OP, but cannot find it. Can you please provide a link? Thanks.

http://www.twitch.tv/twitch/b/557987029

 

The segment about Poe starts at 1:36, and the spell fx, I dunno, like 10 min later?

This has nothing to do with spell effects but I'd like to see the characters look like they are actually in combat when not actually attacking. High guard? They just sit there with their hands down.

To give some positive feedback the fireball (or field of fire spell) and the magic missle like spell (with the 3 bolts of magic) looked great to me. Spellcasting node was very off but that was mentioned already. So the spell effects i saw are very good already. And i think that every spellcaster animation where a caster has a weapon in hand looks somewhat strange. In every game i have played a weapon and a spellcaster doesnt realy go well together. It´s different if you use a quarterstaff or wand to handle the anims just because you can attach the spell node directly onto it. Dont know...

Edited August 14, 201411 yr by NWN_babaYaga

Spell animations themselves looked good, what didn't look good was the effect of spells hitting enemy. 

Magic missile should either splash blood and kind of knock back enemy just a few frames, fire should have some flame effect on body of target, lightning also should go through the body, not just disappear as soon as touching enemy. IE games didn't have crazy animations but it was clear when spells would hit stuff, lightning especially with the special sound it made.

I don't know about you guys, but that fireball looked pretty neato  .

a) Definitely, the lightning arrow OP mentions could use some polishing, even if it was only to make you really feel it has some impact on the target, because now they don't even shake. I'm kinda liking how it looks now tho.

 

b) fireball is amazing, but you could place some kind of remaining effect to the area it stroke, just a texture. Fireball itself creates nice cloudy scar after the explosion (being part of the animation itself):

 

But this effect goes away in very short while and after that there is again untouched background:

 

Even if it was just a screen of this effect from pic1 put over background on pic2 that would remain over the time of lets say one game day or something that would make it feel a lot more powerful.

I don't think I ever understood what the blue(and red) dots above the characters represent. I know there is a bar that counts down till your next attack but what are the blue/red dots?

After watching the video. I think the lightning looks good, but a little 'awkward' for lack of a better word.  Though I thought it looked awkard in infinite engine games too. i always thought lightning attacks should just be instant conjurings of light streaks between the caster and the target, much like you would see an actual lightning strike between the ground and the sky.

the Missile spells need to come from the wand, not the character's navel.

Maybe an ultra-tiny race of beings populates the character's belly button, and the character's attacks are just the firings of ship artillery from the tiny-people's... navel academy. 6_u

I think the dots are your stamina?