Any ideas or heads up on a particle engine?

Published December 24, 2006
Advertisement
Well I hope to start coding a particle engine soon in the next few days... I am going to use GLSL and Point Sprites and make a generic class that one can derive new particle types for what one needs. E.g. smoke, fog, fire. So my question is does this sound like a good plan? Am I heading in the right direction? I would like some feed back from others who have made a particle engine before, and what they may have encountered. :) Anyone looking to buy a laptop? I got one for sale. HP Centrino Core Duo 1.733Ghz 1GB RAM, 7600 256MB, 240GB HD (2x120) DL DVD, 17" screen. No need for it anymore bought it about 6 months ago.
Previous Entry Shadows done? Check
0 likes 2 comments

Comments

rhummer
Don't use point sprites. I did it for a particle system I wrote and it looked horrible. Used billboarded quads. AFAIK No one really uses point sprites. I know in the game engines I used they all used billboarded quads and have very nice effect systems.
December 24, 2006 09:38 AM
MARS_999
Hmm, point sprites IIRC are faster. I know of the issue with when it gets to the screen edge it cause problems due to there is only one vertex per point vs. 4 with the quads. Speed shouldn't be a problem with todays hardware since vertex programs aren't the bottleneck. Does everyone else here agree use quads? Thanks for the reply rhummer.

December 24, 2006 12:08 PM
You must log in to join the conversation.
Don't have a GameDev.net account? Sign up!
Profile
Author
Advertisement
Advertisement