Display a score in TGB using particles.

I know you've seen games where you get an item or something a a nice little score floats up above the spot where you picked up said item. It looks nice but who wants to make a ton of images for all the different possible scores???

I created this SIMPLE particle system that accepts a score (numeric only) and a position (can be fired from a mouse event, collision, etc) that does simply that. It floats up a bitmap based score of any length:

1, 15, 200, 14032235.... Whatever.

You can download the effect and base images here and the code to use it is very simple. Essentially, we just create an instance of the particle effect, copy the emitter for the number of digits in the score and shift them over a bit for each one, then fire the effect.

Extract the number directory to your /data/images folder and add each of the images as a material.

Create a linked image map (using the button in the editor) and add all the number images in order. Name the image map numbersLinkImage.

Add the following code to a new cs file:

//score should be the numbers only!!!
function showScore(%score, %startPos)
{
   echo("Showing score: " @ strlen(%score));  
   
   for(%i = 0; %i < strlen(%score); %i++)
   {
      %xPos = getWord(%startPos, 0) + (%i * 5);
      %yPos = getWord(%startPos, 1);
      %newPos = %xPos SPC %yPos;
      
      playScoreEffect(getSubStr(%score,%i,1), %newPos);  
   }
}

function playScoreEffect(%score, %pos)
{
   %scoreEffect = new t2dParticleEffect() 
   {
     scenegraph = sceneWindow2D.getSceneGraph();    
   };

   %particlePath = "~/data/particles/Score.eff";

   %scoreEffect.loadEffect(%particlePath);
   %scoreEffect.setEffectLifeMode("KILL", 2);
   %scoreEffect.setPosition(%pos);
   
   %emitter = %scoreEffect.getEmitterObject(0);
   %emitter.setImageMap("numbersLinkImage", %score);
   
   %scoreEffect.playEffect();   
}

function t2dParticleEffect::onStopEffect(%this)
{
   echo("deleting");
   
   %this.safeDelete();
}

Make sure that you have the effect (Score.eff) file in your data/particles directory and execute the new *.cs file with the code above.

Then issue a script command like so and you'll see a nice looking score pop up. Cool!

showScore(1234, "0 25");

Let me know if you have any questions, improvements, etc.

I have a plan to extend to support all numbers and characters but it needs quite a bit of leg work - which I'm partially through - and will post an update when I can.

Patrick