Hi all,

in the top-down 2d game that I'm developing, I would like to create a system that can handle water surfaces as well as "icy" and "firing" surfaces, handling of course also their interactions and maybe sometimes "merging" them.

Logically, my engine can easilly think about them as rectangles, that allows me to do everything I want speaking in term of gameplay.

The problem is that I know absolutely nothing about how to render these effects in a realistic manner, not to mention their interaction and merging. (for example, how to dynamically render a small lake that is growing its dimensions due to rain water?, or how to render an icy surface that slowly becomes water under the effect of the sea and merge it with a nearby water surface?)

I would like to be pointed out to some resources that you guys know are good... I think the direction to go is a fluid simulation system, but yet I've never worked with one of them.

I found this book, that seems pretty nice and on target: https://www.amazon.com/Real-Time-Visual-Effects-Programming-Gaming/dp/9812874860

but before spending 100$, it would be good to know if it worths them, or maybe you know something better.

Thank you very much.

Leonardo

I can't state for a book, but what you're trying is to simulate some physics behavior. So the real question from me is, are you trying to:

• Simulate the actual effect (in which sense it will have also most likely impact on gameplay), so that the actual effect behaves realistically
• Fake the effect and just rendering something that looks good/realistic

There is quite huge difference between the two, and in the first case the actual rendering is most likely minor problem (due to the nature of simulation, it tends to be easy to actually render it), you can use information that are part of the actual simulation.

In the second case, it tends to be easy to make 'good looking particles' for literally anything, while extremely hard to make them move and animate like realistic effect (basically 'fake' the simulation part).

1 hour ago, Vilem Otte said:

I can't state for a book, but what you're trying is to simulate some physics behavior. So the real question from me is, are you trying to:

• Simulate the actual effect (in which sense it will have also most likely impact on gameplay), so that the actual effect behaves realistically
• Fake the effect and just rendering something that looks good/realistic

There is quite huge difference between the two, and in the first case the actual rendering is most likely minor problem (due to the nature of simulation, it tends to be easy to actually render it), you can use information that are part of the actual simulation.

In the second case, it tends to be easy to make 'good looking particles' for literally anything, while extremely hard to make them move and animate like realistic effect (basically 'fake' the simulation part).

Thank you for the reply.

My game is an mmo, so the first option is not really an option.

Yeah, with a particle system it's quite easy to simulate ice, water, and fire, and for sure I will experiment with particles in the next months.

Can you point me out to some good in this direction? Because, thinking about it, if I would be able to find a good particle effects for all of these, then handling them "continuosly" is trivial: the only thing I have to do is adjust and change the emitter parameters, and that's it.

Also merging them becomes pretty trivial: two emitters becomes one emitter.

edit: I should say that I want the server to think about those surfaces as simple rectangles or something really simple like that, and the clients just render the effects on top of that.