Friday Facts #325 - New Explosions and Particles

[Nexarius]

Possible solutions... maybe can the graphic for the ghosts fade in slowly? Or appear after a delay?

Maybe a kinda of "radar scan effect" after 30sec or so that the logistic system "detected" the destroyed object?

[BlueTemplar]

Awesome explosions effects, specially on the Rails.

Check-out the classic Total Annihilation, and how this kind of effect made the game feel years ahead of it's time. Each entity blows pieces in it's own way, and not all the time. But when it does it's very satisfying to watch.

Will be awesome with the new sound effects !

[vorax]

Particles == Awesome

[Octavian]

Whelp, my first post since 2013 .
I have been (bordering on religius) reading the FFF blog (thanks to the RSS feed)

Thanks Dom and the others for providing such amazing particles. Factorio is getting more beautiful each FFF. I really like the graphics rail destruction.
The Biters would need more blood and damage indicators (wounds) to be honest. I'm eagerly waiting for the next FFF to see where those particles will go

[SmEgHeAd89]

In my opinion some of the new effects can look a bit unnatural if generically slapped on to an objects death. Like on the train tracks or walls. I do not think they are misplaced, I just think they need more consideration with the phrase "We can also mix and match the different particles, to better reflect the composition of the entity in the resulting rubble". But i feel that this is only half the story.

To me, the naturalness of the rubble depends on not only the composition of the material, but what or how that material is being interacted with.

Train Tracks:
It would make sense if they exploded like that from a rocket or a grenade, but from standard riffle fire it looks odd to me. When the train track suddenly exploded I lol'ed a little.

Roboport:
The roboport sort of makes sense, there could be sensitive/explosive material inside that could ignite and explode debris everywhere.

Walls
I really like the initial damage animations here, but I think they are overshadowed by an excessive death explosions. Perhaps a larger damage spread (something between the death spread and the current damage spread) would be enough without the death explosion. The death explosion would again be ideal for explosive weaponry.

Food for thought - Can you destroy a wall with a flame thrower, and would it explode?

Summery - The effects look really good, but in my opinion do not always look natural depending on the thing being exploded AND what it's being exploded with.

One final note, I really love what you’ve been doing and always looking forward to the next FFF.

[BlueTemplar]

AFAIK, walls have 100% fire immunity (isn't it listed now, with the new tooltips ?).

Impressive or on the opposite - realistic explosions might be nice to have, but they have to stay legible for the player.

[<NO_NAME>]

I'd like to say a word regarding randomized 'hit' particle on entity damage. Particles should really have a tendency to show up closer to entity sides that are closest to the source of incoming damage. I hope this won't be that much of an overcomplication in big O terms in exchange for tidier, more deterministic looks.
19.12.14.01.factorio.PNG

This is exactly what was missing!

[Chronosfear]

Damn, now I want my stuff get destroyed but I dont want my stuff destroyed!

[JimBarracus]

- i hope biters won't bleed when walking into fire. Mass bleeding of biters when using flame turrets would be strange.

we need a crispy bacon skin for burned biters

[BlueTemplar]

Watch out, that might make them more resistant !

[cwalter5]

I love these new destruction effects.

One problem with destruction of entities in Factorio is that once robots are unlocked, destroyed entities are instantly replaced by ghosts so that the robots will rebuild them.

This interferes with the visual effect at the moment of destruction.

Possible solutions... maybe can the graphic for the ghosts fade in slowly? Or appear after a delay?

Sounds like it would make a good experiment. Very interesting idea.

Do we need ghosts on destroyed entities? Wouldn’t it be obvious that bots will replace them? While in some ways this might be weird, I’d assume it wouldn’t be that jarring. The biggest concern I can think of is if you didn’t want to rebuild over the broken construction and how to signify that if ghosts are no longer necessary.

[cwalter5]

One thing I noticed is that the particles from being shot (before the entity is destroyed) are very short lived. They seem to disappear before hitting the ground, but the particles after destruction are long lived. I would add a longer lifespan to the damage particles so that damaged entities have some ground clutter around them similar to the shell casings and explosion debris. That would also visually indicate that those entities are damaged due to the presence of the ground debris.

It could also make the damage and eventual destruction appear more dynamic. Especially if you added partial destruction graphics for entities.

[Reika]

Why do the "blood" particles look like solid "mounds" of material?

[jim lee]

I've heard that Gen. Patton said that.

While doing these new animations, could they look into leaving tread marks as the tanks roll past? And, when you drive through a mass of dead bugs, they'd get all scrunched up and spread all over and get into the treads n' wheels.. Dragging bits of bug behind you.. Etc.

-jim lee

[Honktown]

A suggestion:

Since the animation is a graphical effect, let it have access to the sprite of the object (a custom base sprite if provided? either way). If the sprite is transparent, don't create an effect there. This would only create particles where the entity is, visually. If the custom sprite is provided, it could be an optimized form, in pels (sorry, know that word from last job) / monochrome so no pixel-testing has to be done.

A simulated workaround could be when the effect is generated, take the transparency value from the underlying object's image at the generated position. It'd still "play", but be invisible, for see-through pixels.

Edit: hmmmm I didn't think about tints applying from the base object to the particles. That'd be neat.