[Idea] Manipulating skill PFX colors via conversion

Grim Dawn Ideas and Feedback
1

It would be nice to see that implemented to all skills. Exactly the same as Siphon Souls has, where it changes its color from purple-ish to green when upgraded via transmuter. The color of a particular PFX could change by every percent of the conversion, like, if we convert 45% of physical damage to fire, and we use Forcewave for example, the PFX would have red-ish colo, if we convert the damage to chaos - black-ish, cold - blue-ish etc. Also, to make sure people won’t be sad about that, add an option to the settings that enables/disables that feature.

It is known that not every skill, proc or damage type has a PFX, for example blitz has a little of “dust” coming from our character after we collide with someone, so maybe change that into fire (if converted to fire). Meteor shower’s physical damage would not be affected, as the physical part is the rock etc. Skills that do not have any PFXes could get something like little explosion of fire, ice, lightning, aether smoke, chaotic fire.

Also, I know that could be kind of hard to do, because what if we have physical damage converted to every other type? What if we convert to elemental? It could be fixed to apply either the highest percentage to it, so if our aether conversion is at 45%, and all others are below 45%, our skill is green - setting multiple colors at once would not work nicely, because it’d either be required to add more PFXes or mix the colors (like, 50% cold and 50% fire would give us, let’s say violet, and violet could be vitality, so we’d be mistaken we deal vitality damage) - mixing would look terrible. Talking about elemental, yeah, this one would be also hard to do, but you can always make it to change the color constantly, like, let’s say the PFX lasts 1.5 sec, so 0.5 sec would be fire, next 0.5 would be cold and then lightning (but it’d look kind of bad, so it’d be better to make it “float” a little better, like change it’s color from red to blue to white (lightning) 10 times over that 1.5 sec).

I hope to see such change in the game, it would really nicely affect the gameplay for some people. :slight_smile:

2

Highly unlikely to happen ever. Nice idea that has been suggested dozens of times over the past couple years. Just not really possibly without some kind of huge engine overhaul…

3

If it’s ever done, I doubt it would be for every skill and any value of conversion.

The way I see it there is two options:

  • Manual changes for very specific skills with 100% conversion, for example how Flames of Ignaffar turns blue when you equip Farath’s Cube.
  • Player-made changes done through a NPC regardless of the conversion. Some kind of Illusionist DLC. I’d love that. You could select the skill to modify and the hue using a slider or just a dozen basic tints.
4

Why does this require an engine overhaul? It’s done for certain skills in the current engine, is it not? What prevents it from being done for all skills, except for time and work (I’m not saying those are trivial or insignificant)?

5

http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showpost.php?p=565341&postcount=5

That’s the short reason, I do remember reading a longer explanation on this topic but a quick search failed to find it.

6

The way it currently works, as the post above me suggested, is on a skill by skill basis. It cannot be done simply with a certain threshold of conversion. Each skill you want to have a new effect, you have to create a new effect by hand.

Basically:

Skill A deals fire damage. The effect is red and fiery.
Transmuter A makes skill A deal Aether damage instead. The effect remains red and fiery.
You create a new effect, you setup the database files to support the effect and build everything. Now you link all this into your transmuter file.
NOW Skill A with Transmuter A has a greenish color and is more lightning-y than fiery.

ATM this has to be done with EVERY skill you’d like to be transmuted.

We have 9 damage types excluding bleeding dmg (cannot be converted), if you include “elemental” as a separate type as well (why not?) you have 10. Soldier has pretty much only 5 skills which you’d ever be able to see a color conversion, Cadence, Blitz, Forcewave, Blade Arc, and Counterstrike. Assuming this pfx manipulation via conversion worked, we would have up to 9 variants per skill, since these have to be hand made, you’re looking at up to 45 effects you’d have to create, each one if you actually take the time to make it look nice can take ten minutes up to an hour, maybe more, maybe less. 45 effects on a mastery with the least amount of active skills, can take up to 7.5 hours assuming you did a really lazy job and spent only 10 mins per effect. That’s on ONE mastery, we have 8 and who knows how many other skills that can be converted.

So… without an engine overhaul to somehow automate this process, it would take FOREVER, if it could be done somehow, and as I said, atm, it cannot be done even if you had the time to make up to 9 separate new effects per skill.

7

Ok, I understand that argument.

However, is it necessary to make effects for every possible conversion? Because not every possible conversion is present in the game. So they could do it only for those conversions that can actually be found in the game?

And ok, I know it’s a lot of work. But, I mean, the whole game was a lot of work. And they designed the expansion with dozens of complete damage conversions on items and skills. I guess to me it’s somehow strange to make damage conversion a massively important part of your game mechanics, and then not update the visuals because it’s too much work.

I’d be more than willing to pay a decent price for a DLC which updates the visuals (like 15$ or even more).

EDIT: Also, the worst part, in my opinion, is the fact that some item skill modifiers do change the visuals (Farath’s Cube). It really breaks the immersion in the game (for me), if you have converted visuals on a case by case basis. Either have it for all 100% conversions, or for none. This way is just…sloppy?

8

Item modifiers not changing effects is probably just the fact that there was probably no time to squeeze it in, I could be mistaken but I think it was already mentioned that some would be added later.

However, is it necessary to make effects for every possible conversion? Because not every possible conversion is present in the game. So they could do it only for those conversions that can actually be found in the game?

This is really not part of the argument, you arguing a hypothetical situation I created in my post. As was mentioned, it’s a skill by skill basis. If you understand, just drop it because there’s really nothing that can be done about it. If there are item modifiers or transmuters that should have new fx, you can suggest those to have it, but generic conversion is not in the scope of what the engine can do at this time. And given how dated this engine is… it’s more likely you’d see this in GD2 than GD.