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Description
As you can see, the above screenshots showoff my latest project, a particle engine, that I have been programming for the past 2 weeks. There is still much work to do but I'm satisfied with the results I'm currently receiving. Now onto the technical stuff :)
I'm using SDL to setup the render window and OpenGL for hardware acceleration. This combination provides me the ability to port my engine onto Linux, which I plan on doing in the near future.
In each of the above images, with the exception of the bottom right screenshot, there are 800 particles that are being rendered/updated. It's a simple system, when a particle reaches its death its attributes are reset and it gets placed where ever the current emitter's position is located. I use a linked list to store the location of each particle, this provides me with the faculty of dynamically changing how many particles are rendered in real-time.
The performance isn't bad considering that I didn't optimize the code and that I'm rendering on resolution: 1024x768 32-bit color depth.
Specs:
AMD Athlon XP 2000+
768MB DDR
GeForce FX 5700LE
Average FPS 170
Onto the screenshots:
Top Left:
800 Particles
Alpha Blending
Tried to simulate a smoke effect, I can do better but I have to get the right color combination.
Bottom Left
800 Particles
Additive blending
Same as above image except with additive blending
Top Right:
800 Particles
Additive Blending
FIRE!!!
Bottom Right
1000 Particles
Additive Blending
This one looks a little different and that is because all the particles are initialized at once before the game loop. You can make some cool looking firework effects or explosions with this type of approach.
