Look at Titan Quest on how to properly make auras.

I like the new auras better. They don't clutter up the screen nearly as much and there is an understated grace to them. I wouldn't mind a bit more variation between them, but well done!

In my opinion, this new auras look worst. The old auras that I liked the most were clarity and vitality, the rest were oversaturated with a lot effects around the character.

I understand the concept of new auras, and I like it; I explain: they shouldn't be intrusive, so they have to be visible on the ground (clarity!). The problem comes when one char stack 7 auras, that's why the new auras looks like that, so u can see which ones are runing. But now they look too much simple an flat ;(. Balance between old and new would be great, and giving options to make high effects or not for old PC would be perfect.

The best ones from old auras were definitly Grace and Clarity. Eventhough GGG took a wrong direction this time, I still have hopes from them to make other auras in the vein of (original) Grace and Clarity, so then every aura would be subtle, original yet detailed, without cheap and dull looks as of now.

I think the main problem with old auras was they weren't designed to be used all at once. How about taking a reverse approach this time, make all the auras form one big glyph circle or something with individual auras being only parts of the big picture, something like this



The small inner circle could be clarity, three circles with some symbols on them could be purity, the hexagon can be determination, triangle can be haste, outer circle could be discipline and lettering inside it vitality. Looks crappy but you get the idea, and you can make it look really sweet, it would be visually distinctive and impossible to get cluttered. The only possible problem I see with this is adding new auras.

@Russell,

Yeah they are lol! But you still have to admit, they did a great job with their auras - preeeettty. I love playing that game in god mode running around with a shit ton of auras - I'm so glowy :D

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Udja wrote:

@Russell,

Yeah they are lol! But you still have to admit, they did a great job with their auras - preeeettty. I love playing that game in god mode running around with a shit ton of auras - I'm so glowy :D

Haha yeah but they were in a cheesey high fantasy universe :P I only actualy played around 8-9 hours of Kindoms of Am. I should probably get back to it at some point. I think I rage quite because it hadn't auto saved for over an hour and a half haha. Its on the back burner behind Morrowind and Dota 2 at the moment though.

Though anyway im just gonna say... This will sound rather unbelievable. Big glowy over the top detailed effects are faaaaaar easier to make than sharp small easy to focus your eyes on effects. They are also a lot more fun to create because of that xD.

Btw raics. Im pretty sure that thing there would have the exact same problem. Keep in mind people only use 3 auras(on average according to our QA dude neon). So you wouldnt get anything that even slightly resembles a rune cirles 70% of the time. Also auras all start at a certain rotation. So when you activated those they would all be out of sync and overlap in funny ways. Much like the old elemental auras used to do. Also if you cut out 3 bits of that im pretty sure they would come out more subtle but 4x harder to see than the current auras. I had to actually remove a little bit of the detail and add a bit more saturation than I wanted to too them because of this. As at one point they were so detailed they just looked like buzzing pixels haha. Some still do it now even xD. If you zoom in on 70% of the auras you will notice they all have different little rune signs/words.

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Russell wrote:

Though anyway im just gonna say... This will sound rather unbelievable. Big glowy over the top detailed effects are faaaaaar easier to make than sharp small easy to focus your eyes on effects.

"If i had more time i would write a shorter letter"
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication"

etc. it's not as unbelievanble as you may think :)

"

Russell wrote:

Btw raics. Im pretty sure that thing there would have the exact same problem. Keep in mind people only use 3 auras(on average according to our QA dude neon). So you wouldnt get anything that even slightly resembles a rune cirles 70% of the time. Also auras all start at a certain rotation. So when you activated those they would all be out of sync and overlap in funny ways. Much like the old elemental auras used to do. Also if you cut out 3 bits of that im pretty sure they would come out more subtle but 4x harder to see than the current auras. I had to actually remove a little bit of the detail and add a bit more saturation than I wanted to too them because of this. As at one point they were so detailed they just looked like buzzing pixels haha. Some still do it now even xD. If you zoom in on 70% of the auras you will notice they all have different little rune signs/words.

True, I don't use many auras either as I limit myself to 'must fit on action bar' so with too many auras there would be no room for other skills, never put anything but standard attack on left click either.

However, it still wouldn't look bad and it would be a bit more varied then now, by the pic above if you use only clarity and purity you would get a small blue circle and three orbs, with purity, determination and vitality you'd get orbs, hexagon and lettering outside. When playing in a party, you would probably be able to see the whole thing. About sync, guess some combinations might look weird until you change instance, people usually switch auras once and forget about them for the rest of the session so it wouldn't be that big of a problem, old elemental auras overlapped each other all the time anyway.

Well, it was just an idea, thanks for checking it out at least.

raics that is the exact idea I had too and maybe didn't get across.


on page 1 I added a few figures which can be stripped down to triangle, circle, rune circle, 3 circles around that with rune sign. The shapes not being in tune doesn't matter as they are not outlined to certain angle for them to combine, that and all auras get "recast" in a new zone so most of the time you do see one particular version anyways.

In your case the hexagon and triangle need to be in sync or be part of the same aura as that one does depend on having the right angle w.r.t. one another.


Maybe when I got some time this weekend I'll come up with a concept.

"

raics wrote:

"

Russell wrote:

Btw raics. Im pretty sure that thing there would have the exact same problem. Keep in mind people only use 3 auras(on average according to our QA dude neon). So you wouldnt get anything that even slightly resembles a rune cirles 70% of the time. Also auras all start at a certain rotation. So when you activated those they would all be out of sync and overlap in funny ways. Much like the old elemental auras used to do. Also if you cut out 3 bits of that im pretty sure they would come out more subtle but 4x harder to see than the current auras. I had to actually remove a little bit of the detail and add a bit more saturation than I wanted to too them because of this. As at one point they were so detailed they just looked like buzzing pixels haha. Some still do it now even xD. If you zoom in on 70% of the auras you will notice they all have different little rune signs/words.

True, I don't use many auras either as I limit myself to 'must fit on action bar' so with too many auras there would be no room for other skills, never put anything but standard attack on left click either.

However, it still wouldn't look bad and it would be a bit more varied then now, by the pic above if you use only clarity and purity you would get a small blue circle and three orbs, with purity, determination and vitality you'd get orbs, hexagon and lettering outside. When playing in a party, you would probably be able to see the whole thing. About sync, guess some combinations might look weird until you change instance, people usually switch auras once and forget about them for the rest of the session so it wouldn't be that big of a problem, old elemental auras overlapped each other all the time anyway.

Well, it was just an idea, thanks for checking it out at least.

Hmmm well haste and purity are probably the only ones I see myself looking at again in the future. As I wasn't so happy with them. 1 They dont really fit with the others. 2 Theres no real interesting shape with them. Haste is just yet another circle and purity is just 3 runes spinning around that dont really fit the rest. Vitality I think just needs an extra texture in there to give it some more movement.