Space ROX V 0.2

One of the markings of a professional game vs amateur game is the amount of polish is put into the final product.  Everything from the art, sound, game control must be fine-tuned into a mirror shine.  One of the simple ways of adding that touch to any game are particle effects.

For Space ROX, the first particle effect I added was a thruster trail.  Rather than simply turning on and off the rear thruster animation, I added an actual trail to show where the ship has been.  This is accomplished with a simple “particle” effect.

To create a particle in Flash you don’t need a complex library that some 3rd party sells you.  A particle can simply be a MovieClip object that is dynamically added to the scenegraph and then removed once the animation is over.  In this case, the thruster vapor trail is just a green ellipse that fades to zero opacity and then removes itself from its parent.

It’s a simple programming object, but you can already see the results - an effect that shows that more thought was put into the game, and a little polish that can make all the difference from appearing as an amateur – or a seasoned pro.

Check it out!