New Weapons New Effects

After having completed modelling the new alien sci-fi weapons and getting them in to the game I wanted to complete them with their own sounds and visual projectile effects.

I am pleased with the results.  The picture above is just one of them.  I have three weapons ready and two particle effects.  Two of the weapons share the same ammunition so the same effect.

The effects are created with particles and I use a tool I wrote for myself to help adjust the effect until I am happy with it.  I created the tool as open source so anyone can use it: https://gpuparticles.codeplex.com/

I find it takes a while to edit the 2D images used for the particles.  It's not that the particle textures need to be complicated it's just that it is difficult to visualise what they will look like in the effect until you try them.  There's a lot of back and forth getting things as I want them.

That's the texture from the other effect I have created.

Now for the sound effects.  I was able to find some public domain and creative common licenced sounds that are just right for the sci-fi sounding shots.  At the moment I have used them 'as is' but they need some minor adjustments.  The main change and my next task is to normalise all the volume levels so they are all the same volume relative to each other.

That's a job for next weekend I think.