Custom Particle Fountains

[Project Shadowcat]

As hinted in this topic: http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=19840

I never understood why they just don't have a generic particle fountain actor, with its color set through the thing's args.

Limitedly useful it may be, it can come in handy for when the available colors aren't enough.

[Medricel]

It'd also be a good idea to add particle spawning radius and fountain height to the args list as well. Radius would control the square area (in map units) that the particles would spawn in. Height would control how far the particles are thrown upwards.

[Kate]

here's an idea: With something like this, you could get a cheap rain or snow effect by making the particle speed negative so that they fall down instead of launching up.

[FuzzballFox]

How about a thing that spews them, and what angle it spawns them can be difined...say you wanna have an upsidedown one or sideways on a wall...
Oh and custom colours by RGB values too...the amount of particles, height at which they are spawned, the speed of the particles too..all the cool complex stuff! =O

[Enjay]

you could get a cheap rain or snow effect by making the particle speed negative so that they fall down instead of launching up.

That's pretty close to the snow effect in the source altered version Xmas'99.

[Ceeb]

That's pretty close to the snow effect in the source altered version Xmas'99.

I have some Christmas WAD (it came on the CD with this Doom Hacker's Guide book I bought) that replaces, I think, the slimefall textures with snow. Pretty clever effect for vanilla Doom.

[esselfortium]

That's pretty close to the snow effect in the source altered version Xmas'99.

I have some Christmas WAD (it came on the CD with this Doom Hacker's Guide book I bought) that replaces, I think, the slimefall textures with snow. Pretty clever effect for vanilla Doom.

Heh. Crucified Dreams map99 used midtextures for snow....it used so many that it can only be played in ports that support the doubled segs limit

[Wagi]

Please remember that you are limited to 5 arguments in Hexen Format. If this happens I think it would have to be UDMF-exclusive.

[Enjay]

Xmas '99 didn't use textures though, it was actual particles. IIRC there were 2 versions of XMas99: a WAD only version and a version that had a source altered copy of Zdoom (1.17 I think). among the alterations were the ability to create particle snow and imp fireballs behaving more like snowballs. IIRC, the snow particle effect was something to do with placing a tree actor in the map - but I forget the details.

You can get the original Xmas99 here
http://members.lycos.co.uk/Enjay001/
(last file on the page)

And here is a compilation that I threw together for my own amusement back in 2000 of all the Christmas themed WADs and graphics that I could find. Again, it uses the Xmas99 engine.
http://www.rowand.myzen.co.uk/xmas2000/

Aside from anything else, it's worth downloading one of these to remind yourself how far Zdoom has come in the last 8 years.

[Hirogen2]

There is more. The classic particle actors spawn particles that are subject to gravity (speed increase while falling, v=a*t²). But sometimes you want falling actors like snow or rain to come down at constant speed.
So that makes r, g, b, xy spread, z speed, gravityflag -- more than 5 already.

[Enjay]

I wouldn't imagine these things being defined by a generic actor with parameters in a map editor but, rather, via DECORATE where the five arg problem would become irrelevant.

[Tormentor667]

A_SpawnItemEx is your friend. There is no need - in my eyes - to introduce something like this as you can already create that via DECORATE in a better and more flexible way.

[phi108]

I would love to have a way for a weapon to spawn particles of a certain color moving forward at a high speed, to simulate bullet trails. Like a line of translucent yellow particles above a bit longer line of opaque yellow-red particles, with another shorter line of yellow translucent particles below.
Maybe decorate defined particle actors, or a decorate derivative... PARTICULATE

[Hirogen2]

Maybe decorate defined particle actors, or a decorate derivative... PARTICULATE

Good pun in there, but for one, "particulate" is outside the realm of known verbs and the reference to articulate is also rather random, and two, lump names are limited to 8 characters. So PARTICLE it would probably be.

[phi108]

Well it's not an "articulate" reference, a particulate is a sort of substance that floats in the air as a bunch of little particles, like smoke.

And correction to my other post: Yellow-red could mean orange