I am working on an Arcade game that will utilize lots of special effects, to make up for my lack of skill in the art department. However, I seem to lack the background in how games create a variety of special effects. Especially ones that are rendered in real time and are non static. Instead of reinventing the wheel, I was wondering if you guys could comment on how the following effects could be done efficiently using DirectX. (Not specific code but more along the lines of general terms.) Screens are taken from Final Fantasy X-2, which IMO has great special effects. effect1 1. Perhaps point sprites alpha blended together similar to a lens flare? 2. Rendering several lines then blending them together? effect2 3. No idea, seems like it would take too many point sprites to render the trails. effect3 4.? 5. Render a texture of a circle on the ground and apply some blur/alpha blending? effect4 6. Smaller point sprites similar to 1. 7. My guess would be similar effect as 4 but not sure. In additions, web sites and/or books that talk about these kinds of special effects would be greatly appreciated. edit: I can't seem to get the images to show up so I made them links.

Hi,
i think that for effects 2) and 4) the effect is drawn in a simple image which is used like a texture, i think it's maybe the same thing for 1) or that it is motion blur.

Looks like a billboard with animated textures. For all of them.

Effect 4 (in effect3.jpg), reminds me of an ASM Fire demo I saw once. Something you could try for that is to create a semicircular mesh, and create a fire-like effect. I'm really not experienced in shaders, but a fire effect using shaders might do the trick.

Effect 6 looks like point sprites. So you could probably make that effect using a particle system.

Effect 7 looks like a planar polygon with that texture slapped on it. Then you probably just rotate the plane in varying degrees (or radians if you're using those instead) to get the rotating effect.

Effect 5 looks like Effect 7, except with a different texture, and maybe it doesn't rotate, but expands. *shrug*

Effect 1 looks like a billboarded sprite.

Of course, I could be off on a lot of these, but that's how I see 'em.

Thanks for the input, time to go experiment.