Yay. Awesome. I love your simplistic -- yet aesthetically pleasing! -- graphics. [smile]

Although they may not seem that stunning to you, the developer, they really add a lot to the 'beefiness' of your posts. Offering nice visuals always keeps the readers coming back for more!

Thanks. As I'm sure you're aware, feedback like that can make the difference between scrapping a project and seeing it through to completion. One of the reasons I subscribed to Gamedev was in the hope that the journal, and perhaps even one day the showcase, would have that effect on me.

The block graphics are a bit fill-in, although I tend to prefer simple graphics. I'm certainly no artist and do not claim to be, but years of necessity-driven bad programmer art has honed my PaintShopPro skills to the "acceptable" I like to think.

Actually, one of the things I like most about the new (to me) features of Direct3D, like diffuse colours and alpha-blending, is that I can cram a lot of "free" effects into games without having to create more graphics.

I actually hate drawing and animating sprites.

Particles!

Particles indeed. Particles rock when you hate drawing explosions and stuff.

I've just got a basic bitmap:



and an alpha map (red to black - solid to transparent):



then a CreateExplosion call that bungs a load of them at the centre of the explosion with random X and Y velocities. Inheritance takes care of moving them since particles, like every other screen object, derive from classes that take care of movement and so on.

When a particle's life starts to expire, its global alpha value fades out.

Looks wicked. Can't really get the effect from screenshots.