Terraria: A Bit Of Dust

Terraria: A Bit Of Dust

Dust is all around us, not just in real life, but also in Terraria. If you’ve played this game longer than a few seconds, you’ve probably seen and are aware of dust. I mean, load into a world, and bam, there it is. Dust is a unique visual effect used by many, many things in Terraria to spice up the look of the game. It basically consists of an extremely small, typically 2×2 to 4×4 sprite, which is drawn somewhere on screen. You can control what sprite is used for the dust particle by choosing a dust "type" – there are 324 built-in dust types in the game, plus whatever you decide to mod in. Once you determine that, you can modify the dust particle by setting its position, initial velocity, size, light emission, and color to get the effect you want. Oh, and if it wasn’t obvious, the dust type also controls the dust’s behavior after it spawns in. Most dusts just fizzle out over time by decreasing their scale, but I guess this one doesn’t, or at least it acts unintentionally when spawned in with my random Dust Gun’s parameters… but yeah, dust [type] controls dust behavior. Using dust has many advantages. First, unlike projectiles and NPCs, it is intangible, meaning it has no effect on gameplay. It is purely a visual effect. Second, it is very lightweight – up to 6,000 dust can exist in the world simultaneously, compared to just 1,000 projectiles or 200 NPCs, so you can work with more at once. It is extremely difficult, though possible, to lag the game using dust. And third, it is very versatile – for any effect where particles suffice, the customizability of dust particles should make it work. This is why dust particles show themselves everywhere. There are the obvious examples, like Hermes Boots, which spawn large cloud dust particles whenever you’re running quickly, the mana refresh, which spawns a burst of blue on you to notify you that you’ve reached full mana, the smoke trail of a rocket, which is pretty self-evident, or all the mining particles that show up whenever you mine anything. There’s quite a few of those. Then there are less obvious examples, like the breath bubbles your character emits whenever you’re underwater, the sparks that give extra light to torches, the crumbs that come off eaten food, the buzz of a Lightning Aura sentry, the sliminess of a slime, or the confetti of a party popper, just to name a few. The least obvious cases may be in weapons or ammunition. For example, the Chlorophyte Bullet you know and love isn’t an actual bullet, but instead a trail of dust. To create the bullet’s "streak", the bullet simply spawns a glowing green dust particle every update at its position, so 180 times per second. This line of particles follows the path of the bullet, creating the streak we’re all so familiar with. You can actually see the real bullet here when firing this shotgun, followed by the dust trail. The projectile itself is actually pretty obvious, though given how fast the bullets travel you barely notice it. I sometimes still wonder why they didn’t make it invisible though, like in our next example. The Shadowbeam Staff and other similar weapons also use dust, but with as its projectile is invisible, the entirety of the beam is made of dust particles. For those not aware, the Shadowbeam Staff is not a hitscan weapon, but instead spawns an incredibly fast moving projectile that traces out the path of the beam, like this, but 100 times faster. The beam projectile travels over 100 tiles in under 3 ticks, which makes the beam feel nearly instant. Wherever this invisible shadowbeam travels, it spawns a glowing purple dust particle at a location somewhere near it. As it travels through its 300 updates in 1/20th of a second, these dust particles show up as a thin shadowbeam trail following the path of the projectile, which is what we see. So, that’s a brief summary of dust. Like a shake of pepper onto… anything, it gives Terraria the little bit of spice that makes it feel more alive. It’s small (literally) but still very important. If you enjoyed this video, consider subscribing as it supports the channel – only about a quarter of you are. Similar videos will be on the left and right. Either way, thank you for watching, and good day and good bye. See you next month, or something, I dunno.

Terraria: A Bit About Dust
terradead
discord: https://discord.com/invite/yJrCt9YFz5

#terraria

Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
0:12 What is dust and how do you use it?
0:58 What’s different about dust?
1:30 Examples of dust in use
2:02 Examples of dust as the weapon projectile
3:29 Outro

Music:
Terraria – Sandstorm
Terraria – Rain

Mods and Packs:
Foundry & Alchemy (Pack) – https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2440505684
Stanberry Font (Pack) –
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2559652586
Stormdark UI (Pack) –
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2448259079
DragonLens (Cheat Mod) –
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2939737748
Better Zoom (QoL) –
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2562953970
Character Stats (QoL) –
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3033200611

Terraria: A Bit About Dust