Particle effects

#1 particles are mostly tiny billboards, (bunch of textured (could also be animated) triangles or quads that are always facing the camera).

#2 how come sometimes they look different from different angles? (it may jsut be me tho...)

thanks.

#3 it could be the texture is animating, or just fading out the particles

#4 Particle systems don't have be billboarded. In fact, they usually aren't.

In the most general terms I can think of, particle systems are, well, a system of particles, each particle having a liftetime. During a particles lifetime, certain aspects of it will change, such as colour, position, velocity, etc.. Particles are created by particle emitters, which set a particles initial values. Then the particle goes on it's marry way, changing its state based on some algorithm until it dies.

There are lots of good tutorials on particle systems at www.flipcode.com.

#5 Scott, "merry" not "marry" and I think he was asking about how particles work in the v12 engine itself.

To answer what I know so far, the particles in v12 are 2D textures which are plotted in 3D space. I haven't looked into them too much at this point. I know that they can be scripted in for vehicles (dust off), weapons (sparks), players (footpuffs), etc. I've played with Harold "Labrat" Brown's footpuff/vehicle emitters/particles a little, he might be who you want to ask.

#6 Yeah i was taking about in v12 (tho i needed to know what they wre). thanks all