Particle System Features

Game Play & Game Design
#1

So I have made my self a Particle System and right now its probably in its alpha stage.
My whole goal was to make a system that could be used anywhere with a really easy to use api.
Eventually, a really easy editor to make cool effects via multiple emitters vs just one.

This is a video of what I got so far. Just me mucking around with it. It is much sharper and more detailed but youtube made everything look muddy.

Tell me what you all think?

Any features you would like to see and a particle system?

#2

The fire looks really good! How did you do it?

Btw, what’s that background music? Quite catchy ;D

#3

Really nice!:slight_smile: This looks pretty solid, keep it up please ;D

#4

@ra4king
The song I made myself as a menu theme for some game. Menu themes shouldn’t need to be long for a simple game as you won’t spend much time there.
I do all sorts of Sound FX stuff.

@_Al3x
I will try but I have lots of school this week so not going to be working on it there, but next week I am free do to Spring break and…7 days of no sleep programing is what I plan.

:open_mouth:

#5

Seconded!

#6

Watch out guy ;D

#7

Nice!

#8

So I am really sick which sucks because I am on break but that does not mean I can’t program. ;D

So I have just fixed the way you tell an emitter what direction to emit particles at.

t.setAngle(120,150);

will throw some particles between 120 and 150 degrees. Funny thing is that in java2D this will throw particles in the 3rd quadrant not the second. 0-90 is 4th 91-180 is 3rd and so on.

I also have a new video showing a waterfall effect and another feature which may not be necessary.

http://youtu.be/pGeMZup_i4A (again very washed out because of youtube so here are some screens)

Screen Shots
http://img267.imageshack.us/img267/1492/15516558.jpg
http://img535.imageshack.us/img535/2297/untiytled.jpg
http://img713.imageshack.us/img713/9606/sprite0.jpg

Basically, you can set a bounding box that well not render the particles if they are not inside it. (don’t render whats not on screen) I don’t think java2D does this be default and it seems to improve performance.

But I really would like input of what things/features you would like to see in a particle system. I can make it so you don’t update the particles if they are not on the screen or +/- 100 pixels around it. Blinking particles. Fading in and out. (still working on easy to use system for this) rotation ( reluctant to add this as it really slows things down in java2D) Global friction, gravity, and wind. All particles default to rendering a square if they don’t have an image. Particles that poo money on to your desktop. (ok that I can’t do)

What are some other things big or small that you would like to see? ???

#9

Don’t know if people care or not but I am working on an effect editor that will allow people to make cool effects using the SystemX. I plan on using this editor for feature games I will make but if anyone else wants to use it cool.

Here are some features:

  1. Use an image for the particle or use a an Array of images for the particle. Or if you want, just use basic primitive rendering and go all retro.
  2. Add multiple emitters in one effect to achieve many different types of effects: fireballs, explosions, rain, snow, sparks anything.
  3. Have control over basically every attribute a particle can have and see the results instantly under different testing modes.
  4. Be able to test many different effects easily and quickly. If its a tail effect use the tail effect test to watch a projectile fly across the screen using your new effect. If its an explosion, click around in the explosion test mode and enjoy the light show. For continuous effects, try out the, you guessed it, continuous effect mode.
  5. Change the background the effects are being tested on. Sometimes they look good in the editor with a black or white background but just don’t fit when you actually use them in a game. You can also load an image as the background.
  6. Some of the attributes you can use include: speed, acceleration, location, angle, age, agedecay, fade, fadedecay, size, maxsize, growthrate/shrinkrate, maxspeed, spread, rotation, emit number, blink, random, and more.
  7. Set the max number of particles, emitters, and effects.
  8. Set the global Wind and gravity.
  9. Documentation and examples on how to use SystemX.

These are currently things that I will be using in my games. If there are things that you would use that aren’t hear please tell me.
Eventually, I will port this over to OpenGL and slowly add more OpenGL features, primary shaders and the ability to set the shaders.

#10

Of course we care, we just don’t oftenly reply with post :wink:
Mostly I wait for your editor, cause particles have caused me prob for looong time.

#11

Ehh. So here is the alpha version of meh editor. It has many features missing and is quirky. (yet to add image loading as I am not sure how I want to do that and to what extent)

All the features work in the particle system but have yet to be implemented do to me wanting a really easy to use UI.

Basically, to use it, add an emitter, click on “set emitter,” and then you can test it. Everytime you change something you need to click on set emitter.

Only the click test is works. So just click around.

Multiple Emitters work but have problems.

The angles work in reverse to what you do in normal math. Why? Because that is how java by default does it.

So to get things to go straight up, angle1 = 270 angle2 = 270.

Anyways, have fun and tell me of bugs. (I am sure there will be some)

http://www.mediafire.com/?kjct71k8pab2xf5

#12

Finally :slight_smile: let me try this out first.

#13

Seems very good.
Keep it up !!!
What will be the licence of this api ?

#14

So I now know how I want the image loader to work but I am wondering if adding a colorize option would be wanted or not? It will let you load say a grayscale and just colorize it based on a rgb or is that out of the scope of the editor?

Also, as far as licensing goes, its a do what you want with it as long as you give credit but that is still a little ways off as I really want to finish this and remake it using LWJGL.

I also added a scale speed. This will let you simply speedup or slow down an emitter so you can make say one explosion and scale its size and speed to create many different effects with the same emitter.

#15

Then that’s the new BSD license. Use that.

#16

So this is what the image loader will probably look like.

http://www.mediafire.com/?5li265ic1c9gdqr

I will add horizontal and vertical offsets and let you start from some where other then the origin of the image.
Maybe I will add colorizing…maybe.

Any complaints? Any ideas?

#17

Ahhh you don’t upload images to MediaFire! >.<

Use public image posting sites :wink:

Anyway, looks good so far! :slight_smile:

#18

I clicked the black screen which I believe to be showdown place but nothing happened :frowning:

#19

Yeah I got lazy with the image uploading so I just went there.

Make sure that you add a new emitter, set the emitter, and that click test is ticked. Then you can click around and it will throw some particles. I will add tooltips and a detailed readme in later releases that will show what everything does and upload a video tutorial on how to create an effect and use it in a game.

#20

Here is a new version. I think I will actually start having versions so this is Alpha v0.01.

You can now loadimages, add multiple emitters, and I added a temporary tail test.
Everything is much more user friendly.

I am now going to be working on tooltips, example effects (should be quick), and then finally…saving, loading, and exporting.

http://www.2shared.com/file/IFP-mY0I/EffectMaker.html