Particles - explode not drop and fade?

CaddoMoney

I've been playing around with the particle engine a bit, right now when an actor is destroyed, the particles "drop" out of it towards the bottom of the screen, is there an easy way to make them shot out from the actor in all directions and then fall, much like a firework explosion? I'm sure that there is but physics was a long, long time ago and apparently I need to order Physics for Dummies.

As the particles move towards the bottom of the screen I'd like for them to fade, I figured that I could set the Color.Alpha of the actor to Color.Alpha.1 but I'm not sure how to track it's travels along the Y axis?

I'm really learning a lot here and I thank all of you for your past posts and current ones. Thx again!

rebump

There is a fireworks GS game out there (at work on a non-Mac so I can't look at it to know for sure). If I recall, the particles has a "direction" and "speed". Maybe set the scene "gravity" high, then have the particle Y direction "up" and the "speed" something that will relatively quickly be overcome by the "gravity" setting (i.e. thus a little upward movement then down). Then for the X direction, you could use a random number to spread out the width.

You could also use three (or more) particle effects per firework, one for up, one for up-left, and one for up-right. That may yield more realistic effects. Not sure if one actor can support many particle effects, if not, user three actors and constrain their positions together.

CaddoMoney

thx again for the feedback rebump - I'll give it a shot this evening and test the results.

Anyone have any thoughts on how to make the particles fade as they drift towards the bottom of the screen?

Thx again.

Cobra

For a "fireworks" effect, try setting your particles' Direction to "random(0,360)" and checking the "affected by gravity" box. This will cause them to fly out in every direction and fall.

For a fade-out effect, look under Color. There's a drop-down menu that by default says "Color does not change," select "Color changes to" instead. Then you can choose which color to change to -- probably transparent in this case (drag the opacity slider to zero).

CaddoMoney

Thanks for the help guys, finally got it to work - here's what's making it look pretty good for me if anyone else ever needs to do something like this:

Particles:
Spawn Rate Tab
Number of Particles 15
Particle Startup Time 1
Particle Lifetime 4.5

Velocity/Position Tab
Direction: random(0,360) Relative to Actor - Affected by Gravity Checked
Speed:random(20,200)

Rotation Tab
Angular Velocity: random(10,40)

Thanks again for all of your help!