PocketMatrix

I am starting a new game, and it is going to need big explosions for a 2d side scroller game. Just wondering - how are explosions normally done? I would imagine you could get a series of bitmaps (would have to have alpha on the edges) and just run them as an animation. But how do you "draw up" the frames for animation? I have photoshop and can fancy effects with it - but how do you do each animation frame?

The sort of explosion I want is the really nice looking ones that fade away. Hope that makes sense. Any tips appreciated.

Thanks for all the tips.

Johan: I have decided I want to go with something a bit more random than animation type effect - I am planning on having a range of explosion sizes. Thanks anyhow.

Conan: I've tried a palette based blur effect like typically used in fire effects - still have to tweak it a bit to get the exact effect I'm after though:


(Don't click near the edges as I don't have clipping on yet, and there's no exit - you will need to reset )

warmi: Splitting up sprites is a good idea. I was going to have separate "explosion bits" sprites, but will give your idea a go. I had a look at the movie, and the explosion themsleves were pretty ordinary, but the splitting effect really worked well.

Mr X: Thanks for that. If it turns out I can't afford to waste cpu processing realtime explosions I may fall back to that.