Game polishing is one of the most important factors to grab someone's attention. It also makes the gameplay feel smoother and generally makes the game look more done. But how do we do it? Here are 5 ways to add polishing into your game:

1. Lerping
   Lerping is a term to make transitions smoother. This is commonly used in animations, where you linearly interpolate one frame into another. Animations and transitions will stop looking 'choppy' and will actually blend into the smooth gameplay.
    
   I quickly made an example with Ravage Online:
   http://gfycat.com/ImmenseHalfItalianbrownbear
   Notice how the M4A1 zooms in smoother than the AK47. It adds a bit to the game feel and immersion.
    
   Lerping can be used with animations, loading screens/bars, replay systems, particles and many more.
    
    
   
2. Adding ambiances
   Ambiances are sometimes forgotten in games. They add a bit to the game feel and add meaning/immersion into the world the player is playing in.
    
   Examples of ambiances can be some torches, clouds, wind effects, sound and fog. The key to proper ambiance is to make sure there's always something moving or happening on the screen. In FPS games you usually see piece of papers flying around, or some smoke/fog through in the level.
    
   
    
    
   This screenshot is a great example of it. Grass, trees and plants keep moving, the sky is animated, people are walking around, you can hear ambiance sound and the light of day is changing. There's always something happening on the screen. It's not really hard to implement it either - just a lot of little things that greatly increase the immersion and feel.
    
    
   
3. Balancing games
   Balancing is actually a bigger topic to talk about, but it's mainly tweaking values until it feel right. In competitive multiplayer this is a different story, but for singleplayer you want to try to make items and mechanics unique in their own way. In Ravage Online I wanted to make the M4A1 and AK47 feel way different from eachother, but still fall into the category 'Assault Rifle'.
    
   Sometimes it's easy to look at their own unique characteristics such as the AK47 having a lot of damage and recoil, while the M4A1 is usually known as being accurate and have a lot of stability. In conclusion of this I made the M4A1 4-shot kill in the chest and the AK47 3-shot kill. Because the AK47 has a lot more damage now but is known for its high recoil, I added a lot of kickback in the animation. This makes the AK47 less efficient on medium to high range combat, making the M4A1 more favorable in those situations.
    
   I can talk a lot more about these kind of changes, but the key points is just changing values and have them tested by others to make your final changes.
    
    
   
4. Particles
   Particles are an extremely easy way to add polishing to the game. They give instantaneous feedback and add a lot more to the game feel. Because particles are easy to make, tweak and render, you can pretty much use it for anything: Footsteps, gun smoke, fire, impacts, water splashes and a lot more.
    
   This does add a bit more to the ambiance and immersion but the extra feedback makes it nice as well.
    
   
    
   In this screenshot you can see the muzzle flash, indicating the player that the gun has fired (sound also helps). The tracers help players to see where the bullet came from and where it landed. The shooter gets feedback on how accurate the weapon at that range is and the victim is aware of where it came from.
    
   The blood also is an indication for both the shooter and the victim that the victim has been hit. I'm still planning on a hitmarker so that the shooter has an easier time indicating the the victim has been hit.
    
    
   
5. Game pacing
   Sometimes a player can be bored by the game because of the lack of game round/match speed. In 4-player games where players can die (like Super Smash Bros and Towerfall Ascension) players have to sit idly by watching the game go over. If you create quick and fun games, the player will only have to sit and realize what they did wrong instead of waiting for the round to end. This also has to do with the scope of your game. Quick games that only take 5-10 minutes (per round) have proven to (usually) be very fun because it's so polished (like Mario Kart 8 and many indie games).
    
   Another way to use game pacing is by spawning more objects. An example of this is where a gun is supposed to deal 50 damage with one shot, but only shoots one bullet. A way to use pacing is to make the rifle fire 5 times as fast, but let the bullets do 10 damage each. It kinda affects the balancing but the gun might feel better now.
   

I want to end this topic with the very useful video by Jan Willem Nijman from the company Vlambeer with their video "The art of screenshake". The video contains a lot more info about what I did and didn't talk about. It's worth watching the whole thing:

Thanks again for reading!

- Ivar / Evayr