Hi all, i've seen recently 2 particle engine demo posted here, so why not posting my own ? You can get it at http://www.grognon.com/doc Use the login "public" without any password and just follow the links to get ParticleSystem.zip. You can use the mouse to move around the systems, i hope you'll like the (basics) effects you'll see, your feedbacks are welcome. [EDIT] The site is in french sorry, but it's quite easy to get the demo, just follow the 2 or 3 links. And for those who are effraid of viruses (i can't blame you), you'll find also there a sample image, ParticleSystemImage.jpg [/EDIT] [edited by - Sphax on August 12, 2003 5:36:42 AM] [edited by - Sphax on August 12, 2003 9:41:47 AM]

Hey , are you all so effraid by viruses that you can''t download a simple jpeg file ?

Well, thank you all for the feedbacks lol (and sorry for wasting your time)

Very nice indeed! I liked that firework. Did you limit the FPS to 50? I get 50fps on my Geforce 4 ti4400 too.

Oh thanks for the replies, i was a litle bit discouraged as you said Hawkeye3 . And sorry for my late reply, i was in hollidays.

Hawkeye3 : many partameters can be set for each particle system, and one of them allows the one you''re talking about. It''s the "attraction" parameter, where you can set an attraction point and an attraction power for the particles. The same parameter is used to achieve the "blob" effect you can see at the top left, just with different settings.
In fact i have a ParticleSystem class that have a method for each parameter you can set (position, gravity, attraction, speed, angular speed etc ...), and you just code :
MyFireSystem.SetAttraction(AttractionPoint, AttractionPower);
Those this answer your question about "hard coded" thing ? I didn''t anderstand it, sorry.

WhiteCrow: i didn''t limit the FPS to 50, in this exemple i limited it to 100 FPS, so i don''t understand why the performances are so bad (i can imagine some vertical sync problem since 50 is exactly the half of 100, but only 2000 particles in a scene should run much better no ?)

[edited by - skow on August 19, 2003 1:14:50 AM]

i''m getting around 30 FPS on a 1.2 GHz athlon, with a geforce2 MX 400 32MB RAM. running 2500 particles. I think you need to optimize the code abit?

But it looks very nice, I like the flame effect, nice work.

quote:Original post by Hawkeye3
Ah ok, point gravity, I have that in my particle system too, although I''m not sure if the formula I''m using is correct (it seems correct, but I''m no expert with vector math/physics either )

When I said ''hard coded'' I meant if the effect was a special case in which you coded that effect specifically for that emitter. You didn''t do a special case, so the effect isn''t ''hard'' coded. (Actually I''m using the term ''hard coded'' incorrectly... hard code is code that the user can''t change. For example, loading your particle properties from a text file would allow the user to customize the particle effects, thus making it ''soft'' code)

Actually it depends on what you define "user" as. If you wrote your own particle engine class, and then another programmer were to use it, that would make him the user, and if the system basically uses variables to store the properties of the system then i would assume that it isn''t hard coded, since the programmer can make a few alterations to the system with a few simple variables. But if it the values for the whole system such as the gravity was set literally in the code then that would make it hard coded since the programmer would have to go through the source code to change the actual values.