19
Feb
XNA Particle System 2D
It’s been a long week.
Even though I’ve always pointed to a make a very simple game for Dream Build Play so that I may actually have the time to finish it I just lost almost two day doing something to show for about 3 or 4 seconds per level. Discussing how we should make our puzzle appear and disappear between each level we decided that a particle system or an effect of such nature would be nice to show apart from some fading or something on the puzzle itself.
Then it began, the one task that all programmers should ask someone else to do, because once you get the first one working you are gonna keep adding features because is so FUC**** pretty 
I decided the best way was to quick implement it on our editor Sapphire, it now features:
- Color Interpolation
- Alpha Interpolation
- Scale Interpolation
- Linear Gravity
- Radial Gravity (This is more of a gravity Well, everything gets sucked in Geometry Wars style)
Here’s the video
Also I’ve found out that this March 5th near where I live Microsoft is doing a XNA Pizza Night, it’s a contest with prizes to the best games, and best of all, free Pizza and Drinks for everyone. I’m gonna enter with the same game of course so wish me luck.
February 21st, 2010 at 9:32
This looks very awesome. I wouldn’t even know where to begin were I to build a similar program. It’s always nice to find inspiration on the web. Keep up the good work!
March 11th, 2010 at 21:52
Your engine looks awesome. How did you do the particles in a 2d engine? When is Basalt going to be release?
March 11th, 2010 at 23:03
Hi there Michael.
Actually I’m not sure yet. I was hopping to have a beta out by now but still a lot to do. I’m alone working on this and since I’m working on a game I’m mostly adding features as the game requires it.
Probably when I finish the game but not sure.
As for the Particles itself basically I have a particle emitter that releases a batch of particles each with a speed and direction. I draw then using Additive and the modifiers are basic Lerps. Starts with one color and lerps to an end color. I’ll try to make a small tutorial when I have the time. Cheers
May 7th, 2010 at 9:47
Looks fantastic! I’m looking forward to the release. Is it possible you could notify me on mail when you release a beta?
-Jo Emil AkA JoMs
October 15th, 2010 at 22:54
Ran across this on youtube; video was really cool – so I came to check out the blog post. Did you have any plans to release the source for this? I’ve been building little retro games, all uncompleted, and I’d like to compare techniques. Probably need to redo everything I try to work more like yours since your methods look fast/clean. Email me if you’d consider it
Cheers.
May 11th, 2011 at 0:33
Hey, this looks really sweet, and even though I know its a year old, I was wondering if you could explain, or make a tutorial on how your particles work, I have a particle system i made and they have a speed and direction, along with a scale and fade, but I want to make something more like yours with a glow, and start/end position so I can make a channeling effect between two items, so the particles have a source and destination, kind of light continuous lightning, do you think this would be to hard? or do you have any advice or ideas?
June 25th, 2011 at 16:46
Looks amazing, do you do use the GPU to speed any of this up or is it all done CPU side? on a related note what kind of stress will it handle? in terms of particle counts?
anyway like i said looks incredible.