Creating effects with AI
Describe the effect you want, copy the prompt, and paste the answer into effects.yml.
Writing a hit effect by hand means knowing twenty-six shapes, forty parameters and why the shipped ones are never longer than six tenths of a second. You do not have to. The prompt below carries all of it — the step language, the budget, the three rules that save an afternoon, and three shipped effects in full — so the only thing left for you is the idea.
Write the idea first
The prompt is only as good as what you put in it. "Something cool" produces something generic; a paragraph produces the effect you pictured. Say:
What it is made of
Real blocks and items, named. GOLD_BLOCK, COBBLESTONE, IRON_SWORD. This is what gives an
effect its silhouette — particles are only the light around it.
One gesture, not a scene
A hit effect is a single movement: splinters thrown outwards, a ring that flattens, one blade passing through. Say what that movement is and which way it goes.
That it plays on every blow
This is the part that matters. Two to five steps, under six tenths of a second, one sound. Ask for anything longer and it reads as lag in a real fight, not as an effect.
The mood and the sound
Sharp and metallic, dull and heavy, wet, electric. Name a sound if you have one in mind; otherwise let the model choose and change it afterwards.
"Glass. On the hit, six GLASS_PANE shards burst outwards from the chest, small, tumbling, shrinking
to nothing in a third of a second. One flat WHITE_STAINED_GLASS ring flattens under them. A high,
brittle break sound. Nothing falls to the ground, nothing lingers."
Copy the prompt
Write your idea
The prompt around it is already written — the step language, the limits, and effects that ship. Copy it, paste it into your AI, and paste the answer into effects.yml.
Write the idea in the box, copy the prompt with your idea already inside it, paste it into whichever AI you use, and send it.
Then
Paste the answer into effects.yml
Open plugins/ExyliaHitEffect/effects.yml and paste the block under hit_effects:, at the same
indentation as the effects already there. Make sure its category is one that exists.
Reload
/hiteffectsadmin reload. Every player picking that effect is re-checked against the new
catalogue, so an effect that stops existing is dropped from whoever had it.
Read the console
A step that cannot be read is dropped and printed with the line that caused it. That is your proofreader: if nothing appears, every line was understood.
Test it in a real fight, not on a dummy
One hit looks fine on its own. Twenty hits in five seconds is the test that matters — if the
screen fills up, cut a step or halve a life.
It writes a material that does not exist, or a parameter a shape does not understand, and the console says so. It cannot break the plugin — a bad line is dropped, the rest of the effect still plays — but it can waste an afternoon if you do not read the console. Give the error back to the AI and it usually fixes it in one turn.
The key you paste becomes exyliahiteffect.effect.<key>, so nobody sees the new effect until they
are granted it. See Permissions.
Everything the prompt knows is documented here too, if you would rather write the effect yourself: Sequences is the full step language, and Effects and categories is the file around it.
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