To create a good effect, you need a library of particles, a particles engine and a good amount of imagination.

The particles engine allows you to draw particles in a defined position, to assign a trajectory or a movement, a speed, an acceleration, a rotation and so on... In Riftrunner, this engine is rather powerful and it enables us to create a large variety of different effects. But as soon as we speak generically, we expose ourselves to the problem of the explosion of parameters numbers, and it is sometimes difficult to find good values that will make the effect successful.

To obtain a good magic spell, we will bind the various visual effects. Let's take the example of Fireball. First of all, we attach a pre-casting animation to the spellcaster, showing him collecting magic energy. Then, we create the fireball on his hands, and assign a trajectory and a speed. Finally, when particles collide with an object or an NPC, we trigger an effect showing the impact.

It may seem rather simple explained like this, but the creation of visual effects requires a good collaboration between artists and programmers since any misunderstandings between those two species can lead to unwanted surprises.​