Best way to handle particles

Newbie & Debugging Questions
#1

Hi there,

Can anyone point me in the right direction for particles and effects? Things like the screen shaking upon collision, damage numbers flying out of character when hit (-1, -5, etc.) (as well as perhaps +5 strings that pop up when collecting something), particles that come off of perhaps a gunshot, etc.

I’ve googled and searched YouTube for some decent tutorials but can’t seem to find what I’m looking for.

Also, transitions between states. (Menu > Transition > Level Selector…) or (Intro > transition > Menu)

Thanks!

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#2

Screen shaking - easy way would be move the camera to a random axis for some time and then put back the original. Or use perlin noise to determine the randomness.

Particles - are you creating some objects or using some built-in mechanism of a library/engine?

#3

Yea, the screen shaking was really easy! I got it working in a matter of minutes.

& For particles, I haven’t really created any test for it. Well, one on an old project, but it failed. I was just wondering if I could get the basic explanation of how they work.

#4

Nothing ‘special’ really. :wink: You can create a snow effect with some randomness in velocity/size…you can throw some additive touch to look shiny at night…for fire you can change the tint…add more particles… or you can create a system that does all those things…you call it the mighty Particle System… The implementation is the MOST important thing here. Here’s a coooooool article - http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130535/building_a_millionparticle_system.php?print=1

#5

I really really think you should spend some time reading up on tutorials syszee, but here is a completely working model of a particle generator (full source) in Java2D. Enjoy!

Let It Snow?