Self Made Particle Editor

BigDave

Updated:

made by @pHghost
http://gshelper.com/shop/uncategorized/particle-emitter-tester/

Should be ok to be posted in this case it was requested and is not commercial spam.
Thanks buddy.

Original:
I do not have the will power to do it but I think a template where you can change the parameters of the game salad particle behaviour in real time would come in really handy.

In this way we could experiment with the results of it real time and move back and forth levers or and type in values to create the wanted effect.

The particle effect sandbox.

Any one eager to do this?

Approw

Hmm interesting, I might look into it when I have some time.

pHghost

Shouldn't be that difficult, I think. Might have a look at it.

RabidParrot

Sounds awesome to me. Like pHghost said it really shouldn't be too difficult. Count me in! I'll see what I can come up with.

The_Gamesalad_Guru

That's pretty easy to do.

pHghost

Pretty much finished!

Approw

@pHghost show me what you got!

BigDave

@pHghost yeah show us!

I will use it to find a nice enemy death particle effect

pHghost

Thanks for the speed and letting me know @uptimistik

Not sure what the rules are with linking to templates here on the Forum -- but it's up on the Official Template Store now! Search for pHghost or Particle Emitter.

I will definitely make a video for it, both to post it here and on the template store. I worked on it from the morning and finished about 10 minutes before needing to go to work, so only had time for a quick basic upload before I had to run!

Armelline

@pHghost said:
Not sure what the rules are with linking to templates here on the Forum -- but it's up on the Official Template Store now! Search for pHghost or Particle Emitter.

You can link to it on the [$] Market items and templates category. It doesn't get automatically shown to people like most categories, though, and sees little traffic.

The_Gamesalad_Guru

Glad you are charging for your work!

BigDave

@pHghost
bought it thank you

pHghost

I had been thinking about getting more into template making for some time. Actually, I have several templates that are about 90% finished.

Then a couple things happened which threw me off track.

Most importantly, GS added built in A* to Creator. My biggest and by far the most advanced project was dead in the water without any warning, as it was an RPG-focused A* and map generating project.

Further, this was around the time when the previous GS Template Store went into hibernation and then was gone.

Not the best of times to decide to start making templates, it turned out.

Should get back to them, though, and finish off the ones with potential.

pHghost

@BigDave said:
bought it thank you

Let me know what you think and if there is anything to add that might make it better.

BigDave

morning
The Status still says Processing on gshelper.
Waiting.

pHghost

Really?

It should all be there. @uptimistik ?

BigDave

says completed now 20 minutes ago. Looks like it needed like 24 hours.
But the file I do not yet have, will it be sent via email or appear on the page?

pHghost

@BigDave Can you check now? Still getting to grips with the GSHelper system.

BigDave

@uptimistik
nothing there yet

@pHghost
can you maybe just send me a privat dropbox link via privat message?

Armelline

You could have made your own particle test project in this time @BigDave

pHghost

@BigDave Just sent it to you by email.

jamie_c

When this got mentioned on Friday I went to work on an editor as well. It's coming along pretty nice but certainly still has some work to be done on it. Here are a couple screen grabs.

Socks

@jamie_c

Nice ! Looks like there's going to be a partical editor arms race ! I want in !

pHghost

Indeed!

Looks nice @jamie_c

BigDave

@jamie_c
nice the shape selection is a nice extra.

Also something that we just added in the @phghost version is the random range for offset to create the field/area effect.

random(-offsetX.offsetX) via one lever you chose the width of your effect area,
one lever for the offset of X and one lever for offset Y the further to the right the lever is the higher or wider is the area.

Instead of having x offset- and + as separate levers. They share one lever.

From the UI style it looks like it could be part of photoshop or similar.
I like it.

tmann

@jamie_c looks very good - how do you access the start and end color outside the behavior editor itself ?

Armelline

@jamie_c I made one too but pgHost beat me to it so I left it idle on my hard drive. You've got sliders for colour start and end though - that's something I didn't do. How did you do that? Are the sliders a limited number of colours, and you just cycle through a ton of possible combinations?

jamie_c

Let the arms race begin!

When I started my version I was editing the values of the particle behavior directly (through attributes) but found that too limiting when it comes to the color/alpha and shape settings so I 'rolled my own' particle spawner and particle and set it up with the same kinds of settings as the particle behavior so they can be easily input into that as needed but in reality my editor is spawning actual actors for each particle and just applying similar controls and settings to each one. That offers the additional control I was looking for. It runs super fast and smooth though (even in a browser) so I guess that says a lot about Gamesalad.

The color sliders cycle through the color wheel as you slide them side to side. There is no current way to adjust the intensity of the colors but the ability to control the alpha setting helps with that. I'm thinking I might add the up and down arrow controls to the color selectors so the intensity could be adjusted that way. It's all certainly still a work in progress.

It sure would be nice if there was some way to output the data so it could easily be imported an used in another project but Gamesalad doesn't really offer much in the way of file output. I'm thinking my best bet is to add a 'email it to me' button and send a text file via email with all the data that the user could then input into the particles behavior manually. Or of course they could just write it down...

Armelline

@jamie_c said:
Let the arms race begin!

When I started my version I was editing the values of the particle behavior directly (through attributes) but found that too limiting when it comes to the color/alpha and shape settings so I 'rolled my own' particle spawner and particle and set it up with the same kinds of settings as the particle behavior so they can be easily input into that as needed but in reality my editor is spawning actual actors for each particle and just applying similar controls and settings to each one. That offers the additional control I was looking for. It runs super fast and smooth though (even in a browser) so I guess that says a lot about Gamesalad.

Ah, that is definitely the preferred method. I personally despise the particle editor and only very, very rarely use it. You've thrown the rule book out the window, though! If an arms race is going to go on it needs rules! I think this makes yours and pgHost's projects fully compatible and both extremely helpful in different ways. Superb stuff!

jamie_c

@Armelline, Rules! We don't need no stinking rules!

Socks

@Armelline said:
@jamie_c I made one too but pgHost beat me to it so I left it idle on my hard drive. You've got sliders for colour start and end though - that's something I didn't do. How did you do that? Are the sliders a limited number of colours, and you just cycle through a ton of possible combinations?

You could constrain the colour to the slider's position . . . . using sin(self.X +diving maths) - and then offsetting each of the three colours by 120° . . . . hold on . . . demo time !