orbiting Particles.

blackfedora

Does anyone have any ideas on how to make particles orbit the actor that is emitting them?

rebump

As in actually orbit? No.

As in just around the actor in all directions randomly? Use "random()" in the particle position offsets and the particle direction of movement.

I guess if you offset the emission point of the particles to one side of the actor and then move them across the actor, it would sort of look like they were orbiting. Constrain a transparent particle emitting actor to the back of your actor and repeat the aforementioned method, only in reverse direction with darker particles for more of an orbiting effect. Probably a few more weird things you could try.

Just thought you may try using the sin/cos circular actor movement method on the particles instead of the actor with a vectorToAngle() for the direction. May give you a sort of orbiting effect. I'd mess with it but it's 3:30am and I gotta get some sleep.

Kamazar

Use the "accelerate toward" behavior. I was trying to create a sort of offbeat shooter, and instead of just having them accelerate off the screen, they orbited around where I clicked. It's kind of faux-orbit, though, since they can't move in 3D and go behind the actor emitting them, though.

blackfedora

I am making a top down Zelda style RPG.

I decided to make a particle emitter orbit my main actor(player) rather than try to make my player the emitter and make the particles orbit. This way when my player moves I can get a nice trailing effect. Now my only problem is making the emitter move in sync with the player while maintaining an orbit around him/her.

blackfedora

I like the idea of having this dynamic effect, however I'm wondering now if it would be easier and less resource intensive if I simply made the orbiting ball part of the sprite animation.

Valan

You can simply put the ball in the corner of a transparent .png and rotate it.
I did a similar thing with my shield in Fireflight.

blackfedora

thats not a bad idea. adding a particle trail to that should be simple enough. Thanks.