I began working on a spell system this past week after many hours of design and planning on my commute. That’s one good thing about a long commute to and from work! I plan to use it in an upcoming CastleGuard2 update as well as a new title.
There was an incredible special effects system written for Torque by Jeff Faust, called ArcaneFX. It is way ahead of its time and gives unbelievable effects power to the programmer. It gave me a slew of art assets to use, and some great design cues for various spell examples.
One of the coolest things about it is the concept of an effects choreographer, which is a type of object which can manage and orchestrate smaller parts of an effect which could result in many many different things. An example of that would be a series of animation sequences and sounds tied together to make up a cutscene sequence. Or, in my case, a sweet and deadly spell system. I was even able to recreate one of ArcaneFX spells, called Flame Broil. This may look like ArcaneFX running in Torque, but it’s not, it’s 100% Shiva, scripted in LUA and running in Dave’s Sweet RPG Engine for the iPhone. Of course I can someday release everything in web, mac, pc, and linux as well.
3 Photos
This also shows the Grog, a new and very meaningful race which will be appearing in the CastleGuard world. Yes, it’s the Torque Orc, with an accumulation of 101 animations and he’s now converted to Collada and fully imported and linked into Shiva 
I never had a use for him before, but I sure do now!
It does a ton now, driven from an XML data file. In the spell I’ve recreated, the effect consists of:
- 5 zodiacs, which are rotating textures on the ground, moving at various speeds and radii, and fading in and out at various times.
- 4 animations, with different timings and animation rates
- 1 hand constrained particle emitter, to simulate a ball of fire being formed in the hand
- 6 rotating particle emitters, orbiting the caster at the same radius but different speeds/directions and lifetimes
- 1 missile, a fireball with particle trail and constrained to the hand of the caster
- 4 sounds, played at different times
Needless to say, I am super pysched at what this is going to bring in terms of new features for the games.
Until next time!
Dave