#corpghost12

I’ll start with an example that makes the components of an explosion effect easier to see, from Neutronized’s Roar Rampage.

Yeah!

Well, here I tried to break down what I see in the enemy explosion animation:

1: The foundational flames, main part of explosion

2 & 2a: Tendrils? The little flames that shoot out the side of the explosion. 2 is moving and seems to be creating the static 2a animations, which disappear after completing an animation.

3: Smoke effects

4: Debris

Basically most of my explosion effects are also made up of the primary flames, flaming tendrils, a bit of smoke, and debris:

If you can see, my base explosion (1) looks different from that of Roar Rampage because instead of a single animation, it’s a whole bunch of the same sprite plopped on top of one another and rotated randomly (see 5).

Basically, what I do is make every single part of the effect a separate object with randomized qualities, but that’s VERY inefficient and limits the amount of explosions that can be on screen at once. (maybe for me that’s a good thing)

Well, that’s about all there is! But this is not the only method, choose one (or make one) that fits the style of your game. My game was very particle effect heavy so I made explosions that reflected that style. Roar Rampage has a cartoony style with still a lot of debris, so they made an explosion to match.

Honestly, the best method is to experiment with things in your game - good explosions can be really simple! Also, screenshake is good.