[Screenshot taken from geometry wars]


More then half of the objects shown in this screenshot are particles. And it looks very cool in motion!
Well as some of you might know already, I'm working on a game called Wings of Apocalypse. A little over a month ago,Brian , one of the co-developers (3D Artist) on the project felt that the game looked too plain and we needed some particle effects. I agreed with him and a few thousand keyboard clicks later particle effects were born into my world!
Right now we're trying not to show much of what we've done just yet but heres a sneak peak at what the particle effects look like :).
And, for all the game coders out there, the following code shows how I define a particle. The code is based on Java's syntax but it shouldn't be too hard to translate it into other languages. If you're using C then you would have to convert this definition class to a 'struct', but if you're using C++ or C# you shoudn't have any trouble converting the code.
class ParticleOnce you have your particle defined the only things left to do are to manipulate the variables used by the particle and then draw it. Of course its not THAT easy, but its not hard either. I'm too lazy right now to try to explain my particle system algorithms but most of it is basic physics. And, you can find algorithms all over the web lol...
{
String name;
boolean active; // Active (Yes/No)
float life; // Particle Life
float fade; // Fade Speed
float r; // Red Value
float g; // Green Value
float b; // Blue Value
float rd; // Red End Value
float gd; // Green End Value
float bd; // Blue End Value
float x; // X Position
float y; // Y Position
float z; // Z Position
float xi; // X Direction
float yi; // Y Direction
float zi; // Z Direction
float xg; // X Gravity
float yg; // Y Gravity
float zg; // Z Gravity
float slowdown=1.0f; // Slow Down Particles
float xspeed=0; // Base X Speed
float yspeed=0; // Base Y Speed
public Particle(String n)
{
name=n;
}
}