To add effects into your game, you'll first add them in as sprites.

Let's say you're adding in a sparkle effect that has three frames like this one below:

In-game, it'll look just fine and a yellow sparkle will appear. But what if now you needed sparkles in many different colors? You can have many sprites for each color you need, but that sounds tedious.

There's a better way!

You can simply add the sprite of your effect, colored completely white, then color the instance using image_blend. You'll only need one sprite this way and you'll have access to any color you can possibly want!

This works because image_blend combines the sprites current color with a new one. By making the sprite white, image_blend will turn it completely into the color you tell it to.

You'll need want a sprite that's all white (since white will show any color) or a sprite that has white and black (since black shows no other color) to look the best.

Let's pretend we added the white sprite to an object called obj_effect_star. How do we create the effect in-game with whatever color we want?

Here's a few ways you can use this!

with (instance_create_depth(mouse_x, mouse_y, 0, obj_effect_star)
{
	image_blend = c_red;
}

OR

var _effect = instance_create_depth(mouse_x, mouse_y, 0, obj_effect_star);
_effect.image_blend = choose(c_red, c_yellow, c_blue);

OR

instance_create_depth(mouse_x, mouse_y, 0, obj_effect_star, {image_blend: c_green})

You can test it out by clicking in the area below!

Coloring Effects