Help assembling an explosion special effect

I managed to get a giant explosion stretched on the full screen with some "yscale" tricks, lol. I think the sprites are a bit too small for that

Otherwise, I suggest you slow a bit the animation of the explosion (image_speed = 0.5 or less in GM, if you are using an object and its sprite) so we can see it better. Another way to make it a bit better looking (that will last longer), is maybe to duplicate it: create several small explosions on random coordinates over your ship, don't make them animate simultenaously, and that might look a bit better.

I don't know exactly how you did code your explosion (just images in your ship sprite? separate object that you create at the position of your ship? draw_sprites in your draw event of the ship? real GM particles?), but I can help you with GameMaker, even if it's a bit offtopic on oryx forums.

Here's a simple example of an explosion I use for a bazooka shot, by creating a separate object with the 4 sprites I highlighted above:
In the create event:

chrono = 0;
image_speed = 0.2; //change this value to accelerate or slow down the animation
In the draw event:

chrono ++;

if chrono >= image_speed * image_number
instance_destroy();



draw_self();
Ideal way to use it is for example to create this object in the destroy event of your ship:

instance_create(x,y,obj_explosion) //the x and y are the ones from the ship, so the explosion will be placed at the exact same position as the ship

Or even better, randomize 3 explosions coordinates and durations in the destroy event of your ship:

with instance_create(x+irandom(sprite_width)-sprite_width/2,y+irandom(sprite_height)-sprite_height/2,obj_explosion) { chrono = 1/image_speed; image_index = 1; }
with instance_create(x+irandom(sprite_width)-sprite_width/2,y+irandom(sprite_height)-sprite_height/2,obj_explosion) { chrono = 1/2*image_speed; image_index = 1/2; }
instance_create(x+irandom(sprite_width)-sprite_width/2,y+irandom(sprite_height)-sprite_height/2,obj_explosion)