Howdy partners!
Today we want to showcase our brand new VFX! We decided to finally update them, and honestly, we love them. Right now we mostly have animal-related ones, but there is also a cactus and smoke of absolute deception. Enjoy!
1. Animal reactions
They show up when animals react to their surroundings and states, like sleeping, eating or being herded. The icons were hand-drawn on a cardboard-like texture and animated in Unreal Engine’s particle system, Niagara. We wanted to make them look as if the Cowboy himself scribbled them carelessly, without any fancy tools (let alone skills). We love the new update – they give out a cozy, homely vibe!
2. Smokescreen of Deception
Some of the inner workings of our game aren't exactly, uh, visually appealing. To combat this, we use a little trick called Smokescreen (it is not called that, we made it up). We use it in many different places. Here you can see the quest with Ruff Raymond, where the shooting range appears. Poof!
3. Cactus juice
The cacti no longer bleed when being cut down! (Yeah, they used to do that. But now we un-placeholdered that!) It now has this beautiful, green juice splashing out of it. Not cardboard-like this time, we aimed for a little bit more realistic look with this one. They look way better now. Made using simple hand-drawn textures and some Niagara magic!
4. The “Howdy Exclamation Point”
We also recently coded this feature where if an NPC has something you could talk to them about, an exclamation point appears over their head. For some time we had a simple placeholder icon there, but look a this new one – also hand-drawn, and also in that cute style that the animals and smoke have!
So what do you think? Don’t hesitate to reach out, comment, suggest, or share a laugh! Follow us and shoot us a message at our X (well, Twitter...) – @OddQubit. We’d also love to have you over on our growing Discord server – here’s the [link]. Happy trails, friend.