Particle Systems

Engines, Libraries and Tools
#1

Can you recommend any java particle systems ?

Wanna compare some system, and so far the other one I tried is the Slick one which is, aside from performance not very usable because of it’s particle editor Pedigree which freezes all the time.

Saw this: Particle Reality, but seems pretty dead, only sourceforge page is still online and its still 1.0 and stuff

#2

http://code.google.com/p/libgdx/wiki/ParticleEditor
Written by our own Nate. Not sure if can easily use it for non-libgdx projects. Have no experience with any others so not best person to judge how good it is but did the job for me!

#3

Create your own? It’s not really hard at all.

#4

I agreee, making your own also gives you the possibility to make faster because you just making it for own game with one specific task. At least I would never entrust my own raining system in to some particle system anoter guy did… it would probatly end up in a disaster :smiley:

#5

We did. And it was a lot of work, with particle editor, performance and many factors so that because we wanted to have “particle illusion” quality in real-time
However out of curiosity, what else is out there, and to compare aspects…

#6

With that particular thing, I think you’re better off with making it for specific purposes.

Here is the particle editor Slick2D homepage links to: http://slick.cokeandcode.com/demos/pedigree.jnlp

EDIT: Just played with it myself. This is a great tool! :smiley:

#7

Thanks steveyO. :slight_smile: Mine was inspired by Slick’s. http://libgdx.googlecode.com/svn/jws/particle-editor.jnlp

Building good particle effects requires a lot of experimentation. Often images combine in cool and interesting ways when moving, blending, scaling, and rotating, and it is difficult to visualize. Also a tool lets you play around with reducing the number of particles to a minimum without losing the effect.

You could use one of the tools above to design and then go off and write your own effect specific particle emitter for ultimate performance. Still, I have tried to make my general purpose emitter efficient. I have been meaning to replace the bitset junk with boolean[], which I have a feeling will be faster since there are typically not many particles for a single emitter.

#8

Is this of interest to you? =S http://www.java-gaming.org/topics/hdr-fireworks-particle-engine-benchmark/25022/view.html It’s not very interesting from a particle design perspective, but it’s pretty cool from a performance perspective…

#9

I made my own particle system, easier, I like learning (: