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Salt & Steel: VFX System

Document type: Production — Visual Effects
Status: Canonical
Last updated: 2026-04
See also: Art Direction | Animation System | Combat Systems | Naval Systems

Overview

Visual effects in Salt & Steel are not decoration applied to gameplay — they are gameplay communication made beautiful. Every VFX element serves two masters simultaneously: it must be visually spectacular in the Kirby-fantastical tradition, and it must deliver clear, readable information about what is happening mechanically. A visual effect that is gorgeous but unreadable in combat has failed. A visual effect that is readable but generic has also failed.

The organizing principle: every effect should be true to its source. Water magic looks like water, with the physics of water — not blue sparkles. Fire magic looks like fire — not orange particles. The fantastical element comes from scale, personality, and Kirby-level vibrancy, not from abstract abstraction of elemental principles.

All VFX must respect the art direction's color palette. Effects are not exempt from the color language. Cursed effects are cursed green and abyssal purple. Treasure effects are warm amber gold. Combat effects follow the weapon type's color coding. Drift from the color language is as visible and damaging in VFX as in environment art.

Combat VFX: Weapon Swing Trails

Cutting Weapons (Cutlass, Boarding Axe, Dagger)

The effect: A bright, thin arc trail that catches the light the way an actual sharp edge catches light — a metallic flash at the leading edge, then a trailing afterimage that fades in the blade's color. The trail is not thick or cloudy; it is precise and cutting.

Color: Steel-silver primary, with a secondary color derived from any enchantment on the blade. A plain cutlass leaves a silver-white trail. An enchanted burning blade leaves a silver-amber trail with fire particulate at the tip.

Timing: The trail appears at the moment of committed attack animation (the "point of no return" in the swing), peaks at the strike point, and fades over 0.2–0.3 seconds. It should never persist long enough to obscure subsequent attacks.

Hit flash: On contact, a sharp spray of amber-gold sparks if hitting metal/hard surfaces, a deep crimson splash if hitting flesh. The sparks scatter in the direction of the swing's momentum, not randomly.

Critical hit modifier: Cutting critical hits add a secondary arc of afterimages — a "ghost blade" trail that persists for 0.5 seconds after the primary trail, indicating the exceptional power of the strike.

Crushing Weapons (Boarding Mallet, Anchor Chain, Cannonball on a Rope)

The effect: The visual emphasis is mass in motion. The weapon has no sharp edge to catch light, so the trail is instead a displacement effect — air pushed by the mass, dust and debris kicked up on impact, a momentary shockwave at the strike point.

Impact dust cloud: On contact with the ground or a solid surface, a radial dust/debris cloud that scales with weapon weight. Boarding mallet hits produce a circular dust ring 1–2 meters in diameter. Large anchor chain attacks produce larger, heavier impact debris that lingers longer.

Screen impact: Crushing hits on the player's HUD have a heavier screen-shake and a brief desaturation flash — the disorientation of being struck by something very heavy is communicated visually as well as through the animation and audio.

Hit flash: No spark spray — instead, a concentrated impact circle at the contact point, deep orange-amber on impact with armor, dark brown-red on impact with flesh.

Critical hit modifier: Crushing critical hits add a secondary shockwave ring — a visible pressure wave expanding outward from the impact point, slightly pushing any particles or debris in the immediate area.

Impaling Weapons (Spear, Boarding Pike, Marlinspike, Thrust from a Cutlass)

The effect: Focused, penetrating. Where cutting trails are arcs and crushing impacts are clouds, impaling effects are concentrated at a single point. The trail on an impaling attack is narrow and direct — the weapon moves on a line, and the effect communicates that linear precision.

Trail: A tight, bright line effect, brighter at the tip than the shaft. The tip has a concentrated forward glow indicating penetrating intent.

Impact: On hit, a sharp inward implosion at the contact point — particles rushing inward to the impact location rather than scattering outward. This counterintuitive direction communicates penetration rather than blunt impact.

Bleed indicator: Impaling weapons apply bleed effects more frequently. A successful bleed application shows a dark crimson gradient emanating from the wound location on the struck enemy, pulsing slowly with the character's heartbeat for the bleed duration.

Critical hit modifier: Impaling critical hits briefly show the wound channel as a luminous line through the struck target — the damage done made visible as a pure geometric effect that quickly fades.

Combat VFX: Ranged and Pistol

Flintlock Pistol

The effect sequence: There is a specific physical sequence to black powder firearms that the VFX must communicate:

  1. Flintlock flash: A very brief, very bright white-amber spark at the flintlock mechanism, 1–2 frames.
  2. Muzzle flash: The barrel end produces a cone of fire — amber at center, orange-white at edges — expanding quickly and fading in 3–4 frames. The flash is wide at the muzzle and extends 20–30cm in front.
  3. Smoke: A rolling, dense cloud of grey-white powder smoke that expands from the muzzle and barrel vent. Unlike modern gun smoke effects (thin wisps), black powder produces substantial smoke — a cloud that briefly obscures the firing character's hand and weapon. The smoke lingers 2–3 seconds and drifts with wind direction.
  4. Ball trace: The projectile itself may be visible in flight at close range — not a laser line, but a brief motion-blur streak of dark metal.
  5. Impact: At range, the hit effect depends on the struck surface. Stone: sparks and chips. Wood: splinter burst. Flesh: minimal visual, maximum audio (the wet impact is communicated in sound more than VFX).

Misfire: A flintlock misfire shows the flintlock flash without the muzzle flash — a moment of visible and audible failure before the hammer falls on a damp powder charge.

Musket

All of the above, scaled up. The muzzle flash is larger. The smoke cloud is substantially denser and longer-lasting. The sound (documented in sound-design.md) is the primary differentiator from the pistol.

Magic VFX: Maritime Supernatural Tradition

Salt & Steel's magic system draws from maritime supernatural traditions — the magic of sea-witchcraft, elemental channeling, blood-compass divination. VFX for each tradition should feel like a natural extension of the real thing, not like generic fantasy magic reskinned.

Tide Magic (Water Elemental)

Principle: Tide magic moves like water moves. It does not spray in straight lines or form geometric shapes. It flows, pools, rises and falls, responds to gravity. Even in explosive applications, the effect has the unmistakable quality of water in motion.

Particle behavior: Droplet-physics particles. Clusters of water droplets that catch light and refract it, creating the specific rainbow-adjacent glint of water spray in sunlight. At larger scale, continuous flowing streams that maintain water's visual density and reflectivity.

Color: The deep teal of the Teal Shallows palette, brightening to bioluminescent blue-green at maximum intensity. At high tide magic intensity, the water itself begins to glow faintly — the suggestion of sea-witch power in the water's nature.

Signature effects:

  • Wave Surge: A horizontal wall of water that launches from the caster and rolls outward, visually identical to a breaking wave at 1/10th scale — white foam at the crest, dark blue body, the specific forward-curl of a wave about to break.
  • Whirlpool Pull: A descending spiral of water centered on a target location, with a visible vortex formation that references real whirlpool physics.
  • Drowning Curse: Water forms visually inside the target's silhouette — a horrible effect that implies the subject is drowning from the inside. Bubbles rise from the affected area.

Flame Arts (Fire Elemental)

Principle: Maritime fire is different from generic fantasy fire. Ship fires are catastrophic and associated with terror. Hearth fire is warmth and safety. Flame Arts should reference both — controlled fire that can become uncontrolled very quickly.

Particle behavior: The game's fire simulation should produce physically plausible flame behavior: hot gas rising, the turbulent inner cone of a flame, the specific flutter of wind-affected fire. Not soft-edged orange blobs but genuine fire with its characteristic structure.

Color: Amber core, orange mid-tone, white-yellow at hottest points, dark smoke from the top. The Kirby principle applies — this fire is more vivid and beautiful than real fire, but it is recognizably fire.

Signature effects:

  • Cannon Blaze: A ballistic projectile of fire with a trailing comet tail of flame and embers. The projectile tumbles slightly in flight, visually referencing heated shot fired from a naval cannon.
  • Burning Sea: Oil-on-water effect — fire spreading across a ground plane that flows and pools in the low points of terrain. The fire moves like liquid because it is burning liquid.
  • Ember Storm: A cloud of burning embers that distributes fire damage across an area, with each ember producing a small impact flame on contact with terrain.

Shadow Work (Dark Magic)

Principle: Shadow Work draws on the crew member Disadvantage and social manipulation tradition — the magic of whispers, suggestion, concealment, and fear. It should not look like fantasy shadow magic (purple energy bolts). It should look like shadows doing things shadows should not do.

Visual quality: Shadow effects are characterized by the absence of light rather than the presence of dark energy. Where fire magic is additive (the fire creates light), shadow magic is subtractive — light is pulled away from where the shadow falls.

Color: Deep abyssal purple and near-black. The only illumination in a shadow effect is the edge quality — a deep purple liminal glow at the boundary between shadow and ambient light. The interior of a shadow effect is genuinely dark.

Signature effects:

  • Shadow Step: The character dissolves into their own shadow, leaving a brief silhouette impression at the departure point, and coalesces from shadow at the arrival point. No particle effects — the effect is defined by the temporary absence of the character.
  • Dread Aura: A radius of slight light subtraction around the caster, making everything within range appear to be slightly in shadow even in full sunlight. Subtle and unsettling precisely because it is understated.
  • The Finger: A single tendril of shadow extending from the caster to a target, suggesting pointing — and then the target experiences whatever the curse delivers. The tendril dissipates instantly on contact.

Bone Singing (Spectral Magic)

Principle: Bone singing is the maritime tradition of communing with the drowned dead — the ghosts of sailors, the echoes of ships lost to storms, the specific sorrow of those who went overboard and were never recovered. Its visual language must reference the ghostly, the aquatic, and the ancestral simultaneously.

Visual quality: Spectral green — specifically the cursed green of the color palette, but with a warm undertone that prevents it from reading as purely malevolent. The spirits that bone singers commune with are not monsters; they are the dead, and there is grief as well as power in this magic.

Particle behavior: Not solid, not liquid. Wispy, translucent, passing through solid objects rather than colliding with them. Particles rise like smoke but also drift like submerged material — a combination of ascension and submersion behavior.

Color: Spectral green primary, white-green for the brightest manifestations, deep blue-grey for the most sorrowful/ancestral effects.

Signature effects:

  • Call the Drowned: A ghost rises from the ground or water — visibly a sailor, identifiable by their clothing and the water pouring endlessly from them. They fight alongside the caster in translucent green form.
  • Keening Wave: A sound-based effect communicated visually by spectral ripples expanding from the caster in concentric circles, with ghost-traces of screaming faces visible at the wave's edge for 1–2 frames.
  • Spirit Chart: Ghostly lines illuminate the environment, as if a spectral sailor is marking routes and hazards from their memory of these waters. A beautiful navigational magic that reveals hidden paths and dangers.

Cannon Fire

Naval cannon fire is a signature VFX moment in Salt & Steel. It must be spectacular without obscuring the tactical information the player needs.

Firing sequence:

  1. Crew animation (documented in animation-system.md): the gunner steps back, pulls the lanyard
  2. Touch hole flash: a brief bright white at the cannon's vent point, 1 frame
  3. Muzzle blast: a rapid-expansion cone of fire and smoke from the cannon's muzzle — larger and more violent than a pistol, but following the same fundamental physics. The blast cone is 2–3 meters long and 1 meter wide at the mouth.
  4. Smoke cloud: dense, billowing, grey-white. A full broadside should produce a smoke wall along the ship's firing side that briefly obscures the gun deck. The smoke drifts downwind.
  5. Cannon recoil (documented in animation-system.md): the cannon rolls back on its carriage

Cannonball trace: At mid-range, a brief dark streak through the air in the ball's trajectory. At longer ranges, visible to the player as a reference point for where the broadside landed.

Impact on ship hull:

  • Above waterline: An explosive wood-splintering burst at the impact point. Planking fragments scatter, some burning if a heated shot. The impact crater in the ship's geometry is visible and persists.
  • Rigging hit: A rope-and-canvas shredding burst; the rigging at that section visibly damaged or severed.
  • Below waterline: A massive splash from the near miss, or a hull breach effect showing water beginning to enter.

Fire spread: If fire takes hold on a ship, it spreads across the hull surface as a creeping flame effect — not instantaneous, but gradual, which creates decision urgency. The fire illuminates everything around it in amber light.

Cannonball Trajectories

Long-range shots should have visible arc trajectories in certain circumstances — when the cannon is aimed above flat, the ball's parabolic path is visible to a player watching the shot's flight. This serves tactical communication (was that a hit?) and visual spectacle simultaneously.

Chain shot: Two balls connected by chain — the unique tumbling, spinning visual of chain shot in flight is an immediately recognizable visual that communicates "I am targeting your rigging."

Grapeshot: A cone-spread cloud of small shot that spreads visibly from the muzzle — no single ball, but a hail of metal that communicates its area-of-effect nature through its visual spread.

Boarding Actions

Grapple hooks: Launched from the boarding ship, trailing rope. Multiple grapple hooks create a visual web of connecting lines between the ships — the visual communication that the ships are now locked together.

Boarding plank deployment: A heavy plank dropping between ship rails — a massive physical impact that shakes both ships' models and sends a visual shockwave through the deck.

The boarding encounter itself: The transition to on-foot combat on an enemy ship deck. The naval VFX (cannon smoke, fire, distant splashes) continue in the background throughout the boarding action — the fight is happening inside an ongoing battle.

Water Splashes and Wake

Ship wake: Every moving ship produces a trailing wake — two diverging lines of turbulent water extending from the stern, with a V-shaped pattern of smaller waves between them. The wake is a persistent environmental feature; you can see where a ship has been from the wake pattern on the water.

Wave splash against hull: The rhythmic impact of waves against the ship's hull should produce white-water burst effects at the hull waterline, scaling with sea state. Calm seas produce minor foam. Storm seas produce major spray that reaches the railing level.

Cannonball water splash: A missed shot hits water and produces a massive white column — the visual equivalent of the actual water spout created by artillery landing short. In calm water, the splash is clearly visible at range and persists briefly, giving tactical information about shot dispersion.

Environmental VFX

Wave System

Salt & Steel's ocean waves are a continuous environmental VFX system — not a scrolling texture, but a dynamic wave simulation that produces realistic wave behavior: wave interference patterns where currents meet, breaking waves at reef edges, the specific behavior of waves approaching a beach versus waves in deep water.

The visual quality standard: the ocean surface should be recognizable as a real ocean in motion, not a flat textured surface.

Rain and Weather

Light rain: Vertical streaks of near-transparent grey-white, visible primarily against dark backgrounds and in the circle of lantern light. The rain drops on the sea surface creating circular ripple rings. On the ship deck, pooling and streaming water that runs along seams and drains off the edges.

Heavy storm rain: Rain density increases to the point where visibility beyond medium range blurs. The rain is no longer individual streaks but a visual scrim — the world beyond 20 meters is softer and less distinct. Rain impact on surfaces creates a continuous spray effect that keeps surfaces visually wet.

Lightning: A single frame of full-scene illumination followed by a brightness bloom-and-decay that takes 2–3 frames to return to normal ambient light. The lightning bolt itself (when visible) is a branching, high-frequency stroke — not a simple line, but a convincing electrical discharge that follows the multi-branch physics of real lightning.

Fog

Maritime fog is thick, dense, and directional — it moves with the wind, thicker in some areas than others.

Volumetric fog rendering: True volumetric fog that has genuine depth. The world is not just made blurry at distance — there is visible fog volume between the player and distant objects. Ships emerging from or entering fog should dematerialize gradually as the fog envelops them.

Light interaction: Fog scatters light. A lantern in fog creates a full-sphere illumination glow around itself — the familiar "halo" of a lantern in fog — not a directed cone. Ship running lights in fog are navigational hazard and navigation aid simultaneously.

Volcanic Steam (Ember Seas)

Geothermal steam vents produce large, hot, fast-rising columns of white steam that quickly expand and dissipate at altitude. The interaction between hot steam and cold sea air produces visible condensation clouds. Near active lava flows, the steam where lava meets water is more violent — larger quantities, higher temperature, potentially mixed with toxic gases that have a different visual quality (yellowish tint, lower density, ground-hugging behavior).

Aurora (Northern Waters)

Auroras in the game's high-latitude regions are rendered as large-scale atmospheric light phenomena: curtain-like sheets of colored light (green primary, pink and purple secondary) that move slowly across the night sky. The aurora should feel like a natural phenomenon with awe-inspiring scale, not a screen-space post-process filter.

Ships sailing under active aurora should have their deck illuminated by the shifting aurora colors — a magical, shifting ambient light that is one of the game's most beautiful visual moments.

Treasure Discovery VFX

Treasure discovery is a moment in Salt & Steel. It should feel like a moment. The VFX system for discovery is designed to produce a brief, beautiful peak of visual reward that communicates: this is what you came for.

The Discovery Sequence

Gold particle burst: When a significant treasure chest or buried cache is opened, an upward burst of warm-amber-gold particles — not circular, but following the upward motion of something released from containment. The particles catch the ambient light. Some are coins spinning in the air; others are light points. The burst is large enough to be visible at medium range, brief enough (1–2 seconds) not to feel drawn-out.

Light beam: A single vertical beam of warm golden light rises from the opened treasure, visible at long range. This is both reward communication and navigational marker — other players (in multiplayer contexts) can see the beam and know a discovery has been made nearby.

Sound-reactive particles: The treasure pickup sound (documented in sound-design.md) has a visual counterpart — a brief secondary burst of smaller particles synchronized to the peak of the audio effect.

Cursed treasure modification: Cursed treasure substitutes the warm-gold particles with the sickly green of the cursed color palette. The light beam, if present, is green-tinged. This visual switch is the player's warning that accepting this treasure has a cost.

Artifact-Specific Effects

Some treasures are unique artifacts with their own discovery effects:

Legendary weapons: The weapon glows with its own light for 10–15 seconds after discovery — the glow follows the weapon's damage type color (fire weapon: amber glow; tide magic focus: teal glow).

Ancient charts: A ghostly map briefly appears in the air above the chart when first examined — the chart's destination visible as a spectral silhouette before the physical chart is fully unrolled.

Cursed relics: Green miasma seeps from cursed relics when first touched. The miasma should look genuinely unpleasant — dense, low-hanging, spreading slowly from the point of contact.

Curse and Corruption Effects

Dark Corruption Spreading

When a character or area is affected by a curse, the visual spread should be gradual and biologically plausible — not an instant skin change, but a slow darkening that spreads from the point of contact. The color transition from normal skin/surface tone to the deep abyssal purple of corruption follows the blood vessels and seams of whatever it is corrupting.

On environments, corruption spreads along walls and floors following the path of least resistance — cracks, seams, water channels — which creates a visual pattern that looks intentional but organic.

Green Miasma

The active presence of cursed green energy in the environment takes the form of a ground-level miasma — dense, slow-moving, settling into low areas due to its apparent density. The miasma should look heavy, like a visible gas, with the slow movement of cold dry ice fog rather than the fast movement of flame or smoke.

Within the miasma, visibility is reduced. Objects within it appear desaturated and slightly distorted. The miasma itself glows faintly with the cursed green — enough to illuminate the immediate area in sickly green light.

Spectral Overlays

Haunted locations — ships' graveyards, areas with strong ghost activity — should have a spectral overlay on the environment itself. This is a subtle effect: occasional ghost-images of what the location used to look like, visible for 1–2 seconds before fading. A wrecked ship might briefly show its intact ghost-image overlaid on the wreck. A burned port might briefly show intact buildings.

This effect should never be fully comfortable — the ghost images appear and disappear without warning, creating a persistent low-level uncanny quality to these environments.

Feedback VFX

Hit Confirmation

Every attack that connects must produce a visible, immediate hit confirmation effect. The player should never question whether their attack landed.

Design principle: Hit confirmation effects are brief (1–3 frames of peak) and directional (the impact point and the direction of momentum transfer are both visible). They should not obscure the combat scene.

Scaling with damage: Hit effects scale proportionally with damage output. A light strike produces a small, brief effect. A critical hit or high-damage ability produces a large, momentary effect that briefly dominates the screen at impact.

Critical Hit Emphasis

Critical hits require their own visual language that distinguishes them clearly from normal hits:

  • Screen flash: A brief (2-frame) flash of light at the edges of the screen, in the color associated with the attack type
  • Particle burst: The hit particle effect is 3–4x larger than a normal hit
  • Brief slow: A 0.1-second micro-slowdown at the moment of critical connection — the "punch" of a critical hit communicated through timing as well as VFX
  • Sound emphasis: Documented in sound-design.md — the audio and VFX work together

Death VFX

Human enemies: Defeated enemies collapse with a brief blood-spray from wound locations (moderate, not excessive — communicating the violence without dwelling on it). The body settles to a final position that retains its distinctive silhouette.

Creature enemies: Death effects scaled to creature type. Small creatures simply collapse. Medium creatures have a visible death animation with a final physical impact (documented in animation-system.md) and a creature-specific particle effect (a sea creature releases bioluminescent particles; a volcanic creature releases steam and embers).

Large boss creatures: Boss deaths are staged VFX events — a sequence of 5–10 seconds that marks the occasion. The specific effects depend on the creature type, but the general structure: a moment of stillness, then a release effect (the creature's internal energy or supernatural nature departing the body), then a final collapse with appropriate physical impact on the environment.

Level-Up Celebration

When a character gains an experience level or completes a significant skill threshold, the VFX is deliberately restrained — a brief warm-amber glow emanating from the character, lasting 1–2 seconds, that communicates achievement without interrupting gameplay. This is not a screen-filling particle shower; it is a moment of warm light acknowledging progress.

Skill point allocation in the UI (documented separately) has its own VFX — a small, satisfying click-and-glow when a skill node is selected.

UI VFX

When interacting with the Nautical Chart (the endgame map system), VFX elements reinforce the physical metaphor:

  • Hovering over a region: the hand-drawn coastlines on the chart glow faintly in warm amber, as if ink is becoming luminescent
  • Selecting a destination: a small ship-marker animates along the route, leaving a line as if being drawn
  • Discovering new chart territory: the chart expands with a new-ink-spreading effect — the new coastlines appear as if freshly drawn, bleeding slightly at the edges as ink does

Skill Tree Activation

The character skill tree (GURPS Advantages/Disadvantages/Skills) has its own visual language:

  • Unlocked advantages: a warm amber glow at the node, spreading to connected available nodes
  • Disadvantages selected: a brief deep purple acknowledgment pulse — not negative, but distinct
  • Skill activation during combat: a crisp, clean pulse from the relevant skill icon matching the effect type

See also:
Art Direction — the visual language and color palette these effects operate within
Sound Design — audio counterparts to every VFX moment
Animation System — how animations and VFX are synchronized
Combat Systems — the mechanical context for combat VFX