Destiny 2: Lightfall: Commendations VFX
Commendations is a new system debuting with Lightfall that allows you to celebrate and be celebrated by your fireteam at the end of activities.
Hovering over Commendable Guardians will add additional hover VFX to them, shimmering with hints of every commendation's color
Commendations also have some new tech I built out to help make it the most accessible system Destiny 2 has. From left to right: Fun, Mastery, Ally, Leadership.
If your colorblind settings are set to one of our three modes, such as Deuteranopia, the colors of the VFX, along with the UI change to support it. Same ordering as above, wildly different coloration.
Protanopia
Tritanopia
Ally Commendations. Guardians that are not your own receive both muted VFX and Audio Intensity. I worked incredibly closely with Audio in order to make sure that when you received a commendation, it felt special
Fun Commendations. With the Commendation visual language built heavily off of a deck of cards theming, each type has it's own suite symbol. For Ally, it's a Heart, for Fun, it's a Spade
Leadership Commendations. These are represented by a Diamond.
Mastery Commendations. These are represented by a Club.
Concepts by Signy Davis. These helped form the initial experiments and prototypes and helped lay a really solid foundation for what I ended shaping them into.
Early prototypes. These were set up before any of the CInematics work was in for the new PGCR, so I built them into the character select screen. They use different colorations and the addition of the symbol halo seen in one of the above concepts.
Commendations is a new system for celebrating both friends and blueberries alike, launching alongside Destiny 2: Lightfall. I had the pleasure of coming up with and implementing the celebratory VFX seen while giving Commendations in the PGCR screen!
I worked alongside so many talented people, from Sound Designer AJ Novak who knocked it out of the park with the sounds, Signy Davis who drew up absolutely terrific visual designs that really helped instantly inform the VFX design, Fritzie Mercado who is an absolute wizard at what she does on the cinematics, and of course Lauren Maeda, Jeremy McCarty, May Ling Tan, and Nadia Labeikovsky who absolutely killed it with the overall design and production of the feature.
Special Thanks:
Mark Flieg: Rewards VFX Lead
AJ Novak: Sound Design
Signy Davis: Concept/Visual Design
Fritzie Mercado: Cinematic Technical Design
Lauren Maeda, Jeremy McCarty, May Ling Tan: Commendations Design
Nadia Labeikovsky: Producer
And of course every else at Bungie. Teams are Stronger than Heroes.