This sprint, I worked on some improvements to the enemy wave and damage system, some status conditions for the enemies, as well as some exciting VFX! When I started working on the blood VFX, I knew I wanted to do something similar to ULTRAKILL’s rendition. I started with Unreal Engine 5’s directional burst niagara template, because it featured ribbon-like trails behind the particles that I knew I wanted. However, these ribbons were square on each end, and I wanted mine to taper off instead of just end abruptly. To this end, I duplicated the built in ribbon material so I could make some modifications. I found that by plugging a sphere mask into the opacity of the material, and then multiplying the radius by the particle’s relative age (a 0-1 value representing the percentage of the particle’s lifetime that has already passed). This worked pretty well, and gave my ribbons a more rounded, tapering look! The second major problem I had to solve was getting the particles to leave...