Fx
The air and the light of LOCUST: the dust the swarm throws up, the afternoon burning down to dusk, and the sound of a hundred thousand wings.
Fx
The air and the light of LOCUST: the dust the swarm throws up, the afternoon burning down to dusk, and the sound of a hundred thousand wings.
Dust
The stripped event carries the exact spot, radius and kilos of every mouthful,
so nothing polls the farm. A round-robin of five paired emitters throws a slug
of sandy dust and a spray of bright chaff wherever the crop goes down, sized to
the cloud and to the size of the bite, drifting behind the swarm on its own
velocity. The bursts are gated on distance travelled first and elapsed time
second, so a fast pass lays a trail of puffs and a hovering swarm still smokes.
A sprayed event answers with the pale settling mist of a crop duster's pass.
Light
Everything visual is a pure function of Locust.state.timeOfDay. Over a round
the sky's palette runs from warm gold over blue to deep ember; the sun drops
from nineteen degrees to three, reddening and dimming as it goes, so the shadows
rake further out across the fields; the dust haze thickens and takes the sun's
colour; and the post chain lifts its bloom, warms its tint and closes its
vignette. The grade sits on the scene layer, so the world goes orange and the
HUD stays legible on top of it.
Sound
Three ambient beds, mixed against the blackboard: a wingbeat drone that thickens with swarm mass and rises in pitch with airspeed, crop rustle that fades in while the swarm is feeding, and the distant drone of a crop duster that swells as one works nearby. The ears go on whatever camera the player sees through.
Published as Locust.systems.fx
Fx.burst(x, z, radius, kg) -- dust and chaff at a strip
Fx.spray(x, z, lost) -- the mist of a duster's pass
Fx.setTimeOfDay(hour) -- drive sky, sun, haze and grade
Sky and Sun are named scene entities this slice drives. Everything it makes
of its own is spawned under the FxRoot anchor and rebuilt in place on reload.
Scoped to this part · feeds back into the world's score.