Worklog for Ked

JipParticles

Current Features and All that Crap

(Posted 2010-02-11)

As of January 30, 2010, I've been (somewhat) working on a particle system for BlitzMax. I intend to make it easy to use and relatively powerful, but we'll see about that last part. :)

The particle system is split up into 4 different types: TEmitPoint, TParticle, TParticleAttributes, and TParticleEffect.

TEmitPoint is simply the emitter for the particle effect.
TParticle is, of course, the particle that is emitted from the emitter.
TParticleAttributes is used to set the behavior of the particles of an emitter. Like to set the speed, alpha, rotation, scale, color, life amount, emit delay, maximum amount of particles to be emitted at a time, and a lot more.
TParticleEffect is what you would build your own particle effect on. (You are allowed 10 emitters per particle effect.) For example, this is what my fire particle effect looks like:

Type TFireEffect Extends TParticleEffect Final
	Method Create:TFireEffect()
		'initialize
		Init(False,3)
		
		'layer 1
		Local a:TParticleAttributes=New TParticleAttributes
		a.LoadFromFile("incbin::fire_data/flames.dat")
		
		SetLayerAttributes(1,a)
		
		'layer 2
		Local b:TParticleAttributes=New TParticleAttributes
		b.LoadFromFile("incbin::fire_data/smoke.dat")
		
		SetLayerAttributes(2,b)
		
		'layer 3
		Local c:TParticleAttributes=New TParticleAttributes
		c.LoadFromFile("incbin::fire_data/sparks.dat")
		
		SetLayerAttributes(3,c)
		
		'play
		StartEffect()
		
		Return Self
	EndMethod
EndType

Function CreateFireEffect:TFireEffect()
	Return New TFireEffect.Create()
EndFunction

And that's it! You have a full-blown particle effect.

To see my particle demos that I've released so far, go here: http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=88848

Ked

Windows XP | NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT | AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4400+ 2.3 Ghz
BlitzMax | MaxGUI