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Splatting Snow

As you can tell from the design specifications, there is a fair amount of artwork for the game. I use placeholder art in my games until the game is functioning to the point where real art is needed. Then either Mary has some art or it is obvious that she is not going to be able to do the artwork (at which point I have to put on my artist cap and do the artwork myself). Those of you who actually read the design specifications may have noticed that I specify that the snowball art would be done by me. Having the snowball done by me would allow for me to start on the snowball animation and effects without having to worry about changing it when the real artwork came in. The snowball itself is just a dithered circle. The screen shot below contains the gradient and positioning of the snowball.

Snowball

The key part is to have a splat effect when the snowball hits. This is effectively a particle effect which was created by hand but could have been created entirely in software. For those who are interested in creating dynamic particle effects, this applet won’t help but I’ll quickly go over the theory as the hand created version is based on these principles. The first part of a particle effect is the emitter. This may or may not be visible (depends on the effect). It’s job is quite simply to create particles. How many particles that are created every cycle and for how many cycles help control the effect. For the splat, we simply have a one time creation of eight particles, with each particle travelling in a different direction.

Particles are the visible parts of the particle effect. Particles have a life, and based on properties (such as speed and orientation) they start with live out their life. The life may vary based on the type of particle, but for the snowball the effect we are after is to simply to move away from the emitter and grow smaller until there is nothing left.

To create this effect in a simple flash movie, all that is needed is a graphic for the snow bits. Eight layers are created, with each layer containing a snow bit. The bits are motion tweened to move away from the center while growing smaller. A simple particle effect, sure, but one that is not too bad looking considering how little time it took to assemble.

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