I wanted to add some special effects to this image, and then save a single frame to file for use in-game. But once I started playing with it, I thought it looked cool enough that I wanted to build a system for having little 2 second backgrounds like this as an alternative to static images in situations where magic is in use.

After a bit of time putting up the effects, it looks like this.

The effect was actually easy enough to implement, and I could totally see myself using it more going forwards, especially in magic-heavy single frames where an actual story-telling cutscene would be the wrong tool. I also ended up making another 3 of these for the event.

Finally I put together a small video for those of you interested in how things are done behind the scenes.

Apart from that, Act IX is now underway; today's build should take us to day 154 or so.
Hope you like it, and if you'd like to see more stuff like that, let me know in the comments.