Features: Functions Over Time

I worked closely with the technical artists in my group and after a thorough discussion, I retrieved back to my workstation with some main features that they had requested for the editor. One of the first things that they requested was to be able to change the velocity, size, color and other attributes over time. I studied Unity's system for creating particle systems and took some inspiration from the rate over time alternatives. Normally, you would want to visualise the rate of the attribute via a graph and perhaps change the graph directly through a graph editor using the appending of new nodes to the function. Even though I took a lot of inspiration from this, I realised that it was not possible for me to create a graph editor during the time frame of Spite Absolution considering the other tasks I had assigned to myself.

I ended up choosing five functions of rate over time that I believed would allow the TAs to have enough room to play around with. The functions I chose were

• linear
• polynomial of the third degree
• exponential
• logarithmic
• cosine

I exposed up to three coefficients that could be played with. What these variables corresponded to is dependent on the chosen function. In the images, I display what the coefficients represent calling them "A", "B" and "C".

Some problems with this solution were that the TAs needed to do a bit more research than with a graph editor. In the future, it would definitely be cool to try to create a graph editor where nodes can be edited and added live.

Features: Sprite Sheets

A more recent feature, which was added during the beta-stages of our game Fungal, was sprite sheets. It was suggested by the TAs already during Spite Absolution, but it had to be deprioritised back then, making it a perfect feature to add during the second project of year two. The sprite sheets introduce not only fun opportunities, such as animated particles, but also optimization. Instead of loading multiple textures onto the heap, the designer can use the same texture to display different frames of the sprite sheet.

To use the sprite sheet feature, you will have to tell the engine what the sprite sheet looks like (how many rows, columns and frames). Then you have the option to animate the particles or not. If you choose not to, you have the choice of rendering a specific frame or randomise a frame for every new particle. If you animate the particle, you have the choices of letting the animation loop or not and letting the animation start at a random frame for each new particle.

Here is an example of animated particles as the bomb is exploding. This animation has only four frames and is played in slow-motion, but I still think it looks quite neat.

Features: Other

Other features in the particle editor includes:

• prewarm alternative
• choice between alpha or additive blend state
• gravity
• local or world space movement
• different emitter shapes
• rotation clockwise or anti clockwise
• combine multiple particle systems and save as a combination in the engine
• and some more...

It has been a fun challenge to get the features to work in sync. It gave me the opportunity to touch parts of our rendering pipeline, programme the rotation in the geometry shader, perform multiple matrix transformations going between different coordinate systems, design a user-friendly interface using ImGui and become both enemy and friends with RapidJSON.

Encountered Problems and Solutions

When working closely with other disciplines, I have learned that knowing my boundaries and trusting my gut is important when discussing expectations. I am only one person on this task, and I have also other responsibilities outside of this specific one, so I soon realised that I had to say "no" quite alot, even when the requests sounded very exciting. By doing this, we were forced to prioritise and explore alternative solutions which often turned out to save a lot of work.