Particles; With video!

Hello everyone, this is my blog post about my particles!

This is my first particle: A large swarm of bugs that impedes where the player is going and makes it somewhat difficult to navigate through since there's so many of them. As I said in my research, I'm basing these off of the swarms of locusts/bees that you can find in nature.

Here is the texture:

It's a very simple texture, made in photoshop with a custom bug brush for random bits of them being everywhere. If there's anything I learned from this, it's that one whole 'creature' in a clustery texture tends to work a lot better than a bunch of little bugs on one texture.

Here's the setup for the swarm particle:

It's a simple sprite emitter with a ribbon data emitter also attached to it, so that the bugs have little light-trails that follow them around, since they are glowing bugs.

Here is the second particle, the smaller bugs that swarm around the explosive barrels, as well as on the checkpoints, and also on the alternate shortcut path!:

As I mentioned with the other particle, one simple big creature in the middle tends to work a lot better with the type of particle I was going for, so it's what I'm going to do in the future.

Here is the setup for this particle, he is very very simple:

They fun things to do with this particle is the orbit and the initial rotation rate, as it makes them look very silly and friendly to look at.

Here is the video of these particles in action!:

Bug Swarm [Research ; Programming]

So for my level (and barrels) I want to do a large swarm of bugs that can slow down the player, when they're not exploding out of the barrel.

I've looked into these types of swarms before when it's something like a starling flock, but the bug swarms are much different. Many people think of locusts or bees when they think of a swarm of insects, so for research purposes I'll be using locusts as real-world reference and also showing videos/photos of them doing their swarming behavior.

I think I want this to be a GPU particle, with an orbiting module, a small ribbon data to imply the directions that the bugs are going, and also a small light emitter to somehow imply the glowyness of these bugs that are infesting my barrels/level.

I'm not sure how to work the texture into a blueprint of the swarms having the ability to push things around, but I can probably look up a few tutorials on it.

Barrels! Barrels! Barrels! (Programming)

The one, the only, big barrel testing video!

And also, the spaghetti code!

Code:

Video:

 

Abandoned Factory/Research Lab Level

Here are some of the thumbnails, as well as the rough version of the map design. 

Themes:
• I want the location of this level to be in an abandoned factory, possibly a research lab. Mostly to explain why there would be bugs infesting random barrels.
• The time of day that I want this map to be in is around dusk, creeping much closer towards nighttime. I want lights to be heavy directors for this map, and I feel the darkness might help imply an abandoned feeling to the level.
• The terrain that I'm going to have for this level is abandoned, falling apart metals and concrete, with barely functioning lights scattered around the level.
• Color Scheme:

Landmarks: 
The biggest landmarks that I want to be in my level are the splitting paths (one that collapses very quickly, and another that curves around the outer edge of the level for extra stuff.), and the massive slowing swarm of bugs towards the end of the lap.

Inspirational Images:

Boomy Bug Barrel

Here's some sketches and target/references for my barrel!

Originally was going to design the barrel to be bug shaped, but didn't like how it was turning out. So instead, I'm going with a theme of the bugs kind of 'infesting' a barrel and making it explosive, using fireflies as a reference for how they cling onto things, and bombardier beetles for the explosive part.