Welcome to the new devlog for all of Toolkitz products, which at current there is only one. This devlog will be used for any and all future products under the Toolkitz name, with the only current product right now is Fractured Particles.
However, even though this is the start of a public devlog, I've actually been keeping records and diaries of all games that have been worked on under the Toolkitz name for the past three years and Fractured Particles is no exception. This is why I can tell you with confidence that Fractured Particles began life in November 9th, 2015 at 3:32 pm. That was when I had the idea for the game's battle system and made a tech demo of it. This is an excerpt from the diary that I wrote on that faithful day:
"However, there is the problem of the limiations[sic]. I can only have up to around 1200 particles before it starts slowing down. I'm going to have to figure out how to make up for that limitation as I need to add more graphical features... Aside from that, today I just tested out the particle system, how the particles will be drained, and testing how much limit can the game handle. I still need to test out commanding the taking of the particles."
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| The diary of Fractured Particles, all in it's sickening glory. |
When Fractured Particles (which at the time, the game was called Pixela) was just starting out, I was actually using objects for the particle effects. It lead to more control of each pixel to allow an awesome effect where after taking the pixels of the target, not only would that pixel be independent, but it would arrange itself on top of the player in a specific position where it would create a carbon copy of the sprite and always aim to target that spot on top of the player every time Lexi moved. In simpler terms, the idea was to steal the pixels of the enemy and have the pixels form the shape of the sprite you stole from the victim, albeit not perfectly as the pixel would continuously "shiver" in place, and when the player moved, the pixels would catch up to the player to form the sprite.
It's hard to explain but it was cool nonetheless. If I knew I was going to be nostalgic about it, I probably would've saved that tech demo. Though in a way, it is still possible to create it as the code for that particular effect is still in the game, but I'm sure it's going to be a heck of a lot of trouble to implement back.
Now, the reason why I decided to abjure the idea was that, as you read above, it slowed the game down when 1200 of them were on the screen. That may sound like a lot but consider that a sprite that's 40 * 30 is around 1200 sprites in of itself and that size is really limiting to creating sprites for enemies. The current system in place can have up to 2500 before slow down so I just upgraded to having a sprite that's 50 * 50, which makes a bit of a difference.
So yeah, that's how the beginning came to be. What's that? You wanted to learn more about the particle system in the game? Well that's a topic for another blog post, so if there is demand to learn more about Fractured Particles, leave me a comment and I'll make another post about the technical details behind the game.
I guess that's it for the first post. I actually had no plan on what the first post for this blog was going to be, so I decided to simply ramble on until I figured I had enough. Until next time my friends.
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