can you make particles spawn on top of all actors?

pjnolen

how can you control where particles spawn? I think they are spawning on top of the actor they're set to, but, i need to spawn on top of all the actors, as i have multiple ones in the same place?

I have a beam, hit a ship, i can't spawn the particles on the ship, or they will appear under the beam, i need them to spawn on top of the beam.

I tried to put the Emitter Offset to:
x = beamStartX+((badguyX-beamStartX)/2)
y = beamStartY+((badguyY-beamStartY)/2)

which would be where the beam hits the badguy(I think) but that doesn't do anything. The idea was to have the beam spawn the particles, so they would show up on top of the beam.

But I don't know how to do that.

Any ideas?

gyroscope

Hi pjnolen, providing you have all the other actors that you want behind the spawned actor, in the same layer:

In the Spawn Actor Behavior you'll see a dropdown menu next to "Layer Order". Select "front of layer" and you're done. :-)

pjnolen

gyroscope said:
Hi pjnolen, providing you have all the other actors that you want behind the spawned actor, in the same layer:

In the Spawn Actor Behavior you'll see a dropdown menu next to "Layer Order". Select "front of layer" and you're done. :-)

I'm using the particle generator and it doesn't give me an option to change the layer, or am I missing something?

gyroscope

Sorry pj, you're talking about particles (I should have read your thread title properly, my mistake). But the same solution still applies; if you have the Particles Behavior in the Prototype actor (the one to be spawned); and in your actor Rule that spawns, you've chosen front of layer, the spawned actor with its particles will be at the front, as you require. (This still needs all the other actors that you want behind the spawned particles actor to be in the same Layer).

Hope that's sorted it for you.

pjnolen

It's ok matey. I don't have the actor spawn actually. I'm recycling them, so i have him off screen when the stage begins. After he moves onto the stage that's when the action begins. If the actor is already there how do I make sure he is on the first layer?

And following that, i have multiple badguys, if they're separately all shot with a laser, how do I make sure that all those actors have the particles spawn on top of them individually, over the laser's layer?

gyroscope

No probs there: if you go to the Scenes Editor window, and in the Inspector click the button marked "Scene" - then click the button "Layers", you will see all of your Layer folders.

More than likely you will have only one, called Background. Open that, and there you'll see all of your actors. The order of the actors is the "depth" of layers, so the last one will be at the bottom, the top one, you've guessed it ;-) on the top.

So find your particles actor, and drag it to the top of that Layer folder. (you can reorder any actor this way, or even drag them to another folder you make, or even delete them from the scene if required).

:-)

pjnolen

Ok, that helps a ton. But the beam and particles(which doesn't use the spawn actor attribute, it has it's own) that's fired doesn't spawn until after the scene starts, so if I put the ship first layer, when the beam spawns it's 'under' the ship, if that happens, then the rule 'overlaps or collides' is nullified. I can't get any particles at all. But if I put the ship below the other ship that spawns the beam, then I get particles, as though the overlap rule applies because the beam is overlapping the ship, it doesnt work if the ship overlaps the beam(which I just learned)..

But I need the beam to overlap the ship, and the particle to overlap the beam. But I can't get the particle to spawn from the beam lol.