Spellbound Mages

Spellbound Mages: Visual Overhaul

Lightning

• Strikes play out like real lightning:
  • a faint stepped leader crawls down first;
  • then the main stroke hits, followed by 1 or 2 restrikes.
• Bolts fork into branches up to 3 levels deep, and each branch tapers toward its tip.
• The channel cools from white-hot to its own colour, then fades out.
• Bolt edges are soft, with no hard borders.
• A nearby strike briefly flashes the screen.
• Chain lightning (Ball Lightning, chain jumps) crackles every tick.

3D models

• Fireball and Meteor: layered, boiling flame shells around the projectile, from a white-hot core to a red outer shell, stretched into a tail behind it.
• Ice Spikes: clusters of ice crystals burst out of the ground along the spell's path, then sink back as the ice melts.
• Divine Beam: a solid tube of light with a white core and two spiralling bands, ending in an orb of light at the impact.
• Mana crystals: buds and clusters are now translucent hexagonal crystals with pointed tips, leaning out from the face they grow on. Each growth stage adds more and taller shards.

Animations

• Magic circles draw themselves in: a bright pen traces each ring, then the circle pulses once.
• Six runes light up one by one around each circle and orbit around it.
• Casters swing their wand when they cast, so other players see it too.
• Impacts leave glowing cracks on the ground (fire, lightning, frost) that cool down and fade.

Particles

Four new animated, full-bright particles replace the vanilla ones in spells:

Performance

• Repeated spell sounds no longer stack. The same sound in the same area plays at most once every 3 ticks, which fixes the audio lag during chains, storms and fights against groups of mages.
• No more than 12 Veil spell lights are active at the same time.

Changes

• Mana crystal buds and clusters no longer emit light. They are drawn full-bright when a shader pack is active.

Notes

• The new particles are registered content, so servers and clients must run the same version of the mod.