Frozax Games' Development Blog
 

I spend some time trying to create an interesting visual effect in the background of Spring Up! XNA. The backgrounds of the PC/Mac versions are not really nice. I tried to do something more abstract and animated depending on the flow of the game. Geometry Wars 1 and 2 did a very good job at that. While trying to develop an effect, I came up with many different results. I uploaded a video of one of this effect (you can see it in full res here).

Of course, feedback is very much welcomed (negative, positive, ideas…).
I personally have some concerns about a few things:

• Black background, is it too simple?
• When background is colorful, I think the player might not see the “real game” because it attracts the eye.
• Colors are a bit too much “programmer art”. I made also some black and white tries that were nice too.

I have many variables available to tune this effect and each one of them really changes the final result. Basically, the algorithm here is a grid of particles that are animated and lit depending on the velocity and position of the moving elements around them.

I will also probably add thin trails behind objects. For boxes, I will try to attach multiple trails to  every corner.

I also have a bloom effect I did for fun before starting this project, I might try to add it in Spring Up!, probably on the trails, maybe on the background too.