I have had a request that this be re-released so here it is in all it’s free particle glory.
Ok so Lets start from the top left:
Frequency: This lets you choose how many particles per second are made by the particle source.
Lock to Object: If you have an object that you wish to attach this source to (so that whenever the object moves the source does too) put the number of the object here.
Emitter Width, Depth, height: Sets the area the particles are emitted from. If wish to have a visual representation of this available tick the box marked “Show frame” at the top of the editor.
Start Size: Sets the size of the particle on creation
End Size: Sets the size of the particle when it dies
Life: Sets how many seconds the particle is alive for
Start/End Faded: The fade value of the particle on creation and death. Useful mainly in conjunction with ghosting (turned on with the “Ghosting” tick-box at the top of the editor) to make the particle more or less visible
Starting XSpeed, YSpeed, ZSpeed: These set the starting speed of the particle. If advanced is on (to activate it use the “Advanced” at the top of the editor) you to enter two values for each Speed, this lets you set a range of speeds the particle could be.
XAcceleration, YAcceleration, ZAcceleration: Sets how much the particle accelerates per second. As with speeds, if you go advanced you can set a range.
Bounce: This turns on particle collision. It means that particles can collide with objects. The bounce value sets how much of their energy is retained when they bounce (where 1 is all energy retained [NOTE: 0 means no collision, not no energy retained])
The tick boxes we haven’t talked about at the top are:
Show Toy: This shows a little object that you can use to experiment with particles colliding with objects. It’s a weird shape purposely for this.
Hold down the left mouse button while over preview window to move it and hold down right mouse button to slowly rotate.
Rotated: Randomly rotates a particle on creation. This means that one texture can be made to look a lot more varied.
Write Zdepth: Normally on. This disables Zwrite which causes some visual problems with some particles.
At the bottom we have:
YPosition: Sets how high above the ground the particle source should be.
Zoom: Lets you zoom in and out
Set Texture: Clicking here opens a windows Open dialog where you can choose the texture for the particle.
Test Speed:Hold mouse button down while over here to uncap the framerate and see how fast the particle run.
Ok: This saves the function used to make the particle source into the clipboard where you can paste it straight into your code
Ok so what do you need:
You need Sparky’s free collision Dll installed.
You can get it here:
That’s it !
Just include the BagParticle.Dba file in your code.
Initialise it at the start of your program with:
Gosub PSystemSetup
And make sure that these two functions are in your main loop
UpdateParticleSource()
UpdateParticles()
If this doesn’t make much sence have a look at the example I have included with the editor…it makes things much easier.
These are the only other functions you need learn:
PositionPSource(SourceNumber, x#, y#, z#)
For positioning the particle source
PSourcePositionX(sourcenumber)
PSourcePositionY(sourcenumber)
PSourcePositionZ(sourcenumber)
For retrieving the current position of the source.
DeleteParticleSource(num)
For removing a particle source
FreeParticleSource()
Will return the number of a free particle source slot.
Well thats about it, just before I head off heres some more pics of the editor in action and obviously the download link.
http://www.bouncyrock.com/Baggers/ParticleEditor/BagParticle.rar
Thats all folks!
M.I.A is pending
