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Crazy Idea: Saturation slider for particles
celizic
Posts: 42 Arc User
Hear me out...
So, we all know we can't have a white/black slider on particles. Tumerboy did an excellent post on it. The short of it is there's multiple ways particles can be blended with their surroundings. I know glblendfunc's mojo better then whatever directx does, though I wager it's similar there.
So first off Imma explain why we can't do white/black.
I'm kind of oversimplifying things here but particles can be added to the current color. Like fire particles. Whatever color the destination swatch of picture is taken, the tinted particle color is thrown on tp of that, the resulting particle is drawn. This creates bright particles that are great for flames and energy effects. Since black is effectively zero color. Nothing is added where there's darkness. Black particles of this sort are invisible.
There's particles that subtract from the current color. Lot of infernal and darkness effects use this in CO but it's often combined against additive color at the same time. Grasping tendrils animation has almost purely darkness effects. It's more of a multiplying really but it deadens the color down towards the particle's tint. Since white is a full channel it's kind of like multiplying by 1, you get the original color, so white is invisible black is opaque.
There's alpha particles. Alpha particles use the alpha-channel of an image (this is the transparency value for each pixel) to decide how much of the background to replace with the particle's color. At full alpha, the particle comes off opaque at half alpha value the pixel is half the original particle color half the background. At 0 alpha it's transparent. Stuff like leaf aura is this. This is the one type of particle that can be tinted white black nicely. It also looks like rubbish if you try to use it for flames and stuff since it can darken the color its over or brighten it depending on ambient light level. It's just ignorant of what its being drawn over. I remember waaaay back in the forums someone was trying to suggest CO just use this for all particles and everything would be hunky dory but that would not be as pretty as it is now.
We can't add a white/black slider because white would look bad on some particle, black would look bad on others. Some particle effects, like most of darkness and infernal combine light and dark effects and can't go either way.
Enter the saturation slider.
Instead of changing between white and black, we add a means to change the current color anywhere between full intensity of that color and full colorless greyscale.
The lowest value of saturation slider would look like a noir version of the particle. Fire becomes white. Darkness attacks become black and white. RGB values of whatever color in play tend towards equal across the board.
Highest value of saturation slider becomes tuti fruity color in some cases, which may be retina bursting but hey, I say we leave the option there and let players decide what they like.
This would be far more friendly to a variety of particle types because now you aren't telling the particles "Ok everyone be black!" now you are saying "Be black or white or grey, whatever is most comfortable for you."
Now, what about people who want dark fire?
I have no idea how changing effects works under the hood. However if it were possible to invoke different particle effects for a power via a dropdown box, like how you choose between emission points... one could hypothetically make an alternate particle for a power that uses darkness instead of light, and then the saturation slider would make that darkness tend towards blackness instead of a dreary color. This opens pandoras box to multiple emission point powers become "Hand light, hand dark, fist light, fist dark, head light, head dark, chest light, chest dark." It might be more trouble then it's worth. Even if done it'd probably be saner to do it in small chunks. Heck I bet people would be all over that as a zen unlock, or some darkfire savant archetype.
So, we all know we can't have a white/black slider on particles. Tumerboy did an excellent post on it. The short of it is there's multiple ways particles can be blended with their surroundings. I know glblendfunc's mojo better then whatever directx does, though I wager it's similar there.
So first off Imma explain why we can't do white/black.
I'm kind of oversimplifying things here but particles can be added to the current color. Like fire particles. Whatever color the destination swatch of picture is taken, the tinted particle color is thrown on tp of that, the resulting particle is drawn. This creates bright particles that are great for flames and energy effects. Since black is effectively zero color. Nothing is added where there's darkness. Black particles of this sort are invisible.
There's particles that subtract from the current color. Lot of infernal and darkness effects use this in CO but it's often combined against additive color at the same time. Grasping tendrils animation has almost purely darkness effects. It's more of a multiplying really but it deadens the color down towards the particle's tint. Since white is a full channel it's kind of like multiplying by 1, you get the original color, so white is invisible black is opaque.
There's alpha particles. Alpha particles use the alpha-channel of an image (this is the transparency value for each pixel) to decide how much of the background to replace with the particle's color. At full alpha, the particle comes off opaque at half alpha value the pixel is half the original particle color half the background. At 0 alpha it's transparent. Stuff like leaf aura is this. This is the one type of particle that can be tinted white black nicely. It also looks like rubbish if you try to use it for flames and stuff since it can darken the color its over or brighten it depending on ambient light level. It's just ignorant of what its being drawn over. I remember waaaay back in the forums someone was trying to suggest CO just use this for all particles and everything would be hunky dory but that would not be as pretty as it is now.
We can't add a white/black slider because white would look bad on some particle, black would look bad on others. Some particle effects, like most of darkness and infernal combine light and dark effects and can't go either way.
Enter the saturation slider.
Instead of changing between white and black, we add a means to change the current color anywhere between full intensity of that color and full colorless greyscale.
The lowest value of saturation slider would look like a noir version of the particle. Fire becomes white. Darkness attacks become black and white. RGB values of whatever color in play tend towards equal across the board.
Highest value of saturation slider becomes tuti fruity color in some cases, which may be retina bursting but hey, I say we leave the option there and let players decide what they like.
This would be far more friendly to a variety of particle types because now you aren't telling the particles "Ok everyone be black!" now you are saying "Be black or white or grey, whatever is most comfortable for you."
Now, what about people who want dark fire?
I have no idea how changing effects works under the hood. However if it were possible to invoke different particle effects for a power via a dropdown box, like how you choose between emission points... one could hypothetically make an alternate particle for a power that uses darkness instead of light, and then the saturation slider would make that darkness tend towards blackness instead of a dreary color. This opens pandoras box to multiple emission point powers become "Hand light, hand dark, fist light, fist dark, head light, head dark, chest light, chest dark." It might be more trouble then it's worth. Even if done it'd probably be saner to do it in small chunks. Heck I bet people would be all over that as a zen unlock, or some darkfire savant archetype.
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