CLA: Entertaining Tools

I created a simple in game tool to view visual effects. The main reason I did this is so that I could see how the effects look on the device. It can be quite mesmerizing to watch. In the final game it might be fun to have each effect unlocked by completing small goals, like achievements. It's so fun to watch I think I'll try to make sure each effect isn't too difficult to unlock.

I'm very pleased with the first batch of effects I've created even though they were intended as placeholders to test my effect system. The blue cloud effect is a frame based animation whereas the star effect uses interpolation of scale and position over time. The star effect looks a little better to me and I think the edge it has over the blue cloud effect is that smooth movement. The next time I experiment with visual effects I think I'll try a splice between both effects.

This is the blue cloud effect's current frame based sprites:

For the sake of experimentation I'll take either the 1st or 2nd frame and use linear interpolation of scale for the duration of the 1st two frames. When it scales to maximum size I'll have have 5 circles pop in and scale down over time. This will essentially be an attempt to use linear interpolation for tweening the frames of the original animation. 

I realize I've begun to sling around a fair bit of jargon in this post. I originally planned on this just being an unfiltered brain dump while I work on the project. I would like to try to write in a way that is more inclusive for a broader audience but translating to plain English takes time and effort from the primary goal of the project. For now Google can probably answer any terminology questions you have more reliably than I can.

Try the build with a 1st pass on the effect viewer in the links below

Get the Android .apk here

And here's the Windows executable

Screenshots of the effect viewer in action below