Elysian Shadows

How would you go about writing a particle system?
I have an extremely basic understanding of them, and I've seen them in action but I'm still not quite sure how to go about making one.

More specifically:
What attributes would a particle have?
How do you keep them from clumping?
Do you randomly generate the positions within a boundary or do you start them all at a point and modify their directions?
What would be a good particle limit?
Would you draw them as rectangles or as circles? (or does it even matter?)

Sorry for all the questions

Oh and just for the record, this is supposed to be a 2D particle system :P

This should help: http://paraschopra.com/tutorials/particle-systems/

rather than someone doing a tutorial for ya, if you have any questions just ask :D

Attributes:
Position(x,y)
Size
color
isAlive(Boolean)
life_span
force(x,y) or velocity, same thing
gravity(Boolean)

To keep from clumping I generate a random float between -.1 and .1 and add it the the particles x and y
I start the particles at a point and modify there velocity.
I have a 10,000 particle limit
I use SDL_FillRect to draw them

For a particle manager, make sure you have any array of particles rather than allocating new ones each time, arrays go ALOT faster.

since you won't have more than your limit, and array should be fine
although if you were handling a vector manually I think it would be fine? I don't know for sure

eatcomics wrote:since you won't have more than your limit, and array should be fine
although if you were handling a vector manually I think it would be fine? I don't know for sure

A vector with a certain amount of memory reserve()'d should be pretty fast, but a limit on the amount of particles is still the best idea for performance.

Particle Systems are some what easy to make if you think about particles in a OO way.
I just made one 0_o

This is where you pull a marcel and say, "I would help, but I have no idea how particle systems work"

Thanks!