griffinschneider / particles Goto Github PK

Griffin Schneider
Assignment #3 - Particle Systems

Description:
  I wasn't aiming to reproduce any specific effect for this project. Instead, my aim was to create
a generic/reusable particle system for Processing that can be simply set up to produce a wide
range of effects. This was something I wanted to use during the 2D project, but I couldn't find
anything that met my needs. I hope to create a particle engine that I can put to use in the
3D project.
  The "ParticleEmitter" and "Particle" classes make up the reusable particle engine. ParticleApplet
is essentially a test/example harness that instantiates ParticleEmitters in various ways to
demonstrate their capabilities.

Usage:
Once the program is running, press a number 0-6 to view examples of various effects created with
the engine. Each number has a corresponding example, described below.

Example #  Description
   0        Basic usage - various colored squares, acceleration, rotational velocity, etc.
   1        Simple example of textured particles
   2        Textured particles with random tinting
   3        Multiple particle systems with scripted on/off and gravity
   4        Stress test - 100 particle emitters, each emitting 3 particles every frame.
   5        The same stress test, but each particle system is capped at 100 particles.
   6        3 fire-style particle emitters, except the particle textures are still smily faces.


Assignment Requirements:
  Required Features
    - Particles that move in varying directions from a point:
        Yes.
    - Particles with color that varies over time:
        Alpha varies over time if the ParticleEmitter's fadeOut variable is true.
        I did not implement a more generic hue shift over time, although particles can
        be assigned random hues at creation by setting ParticleEngine's rainbowColors
        variable to true.
    - Particles that die after a certain amount of time / maximum number of particles:
        Both. Particles are assigned a random lifespan between minParticleLifespan and
        maxParticleLifespan. Also, if maxNumParticles is non-zero, an attempt to create
        more particles than that number results in particles being removed oldest-first
        to make room for the new ones.
    - Physics system:
        Particles track their linear velocity, linear acceleration, and rotational velocity.

   Optional Features
     - Textured particles
        Pass the constructor of ParticleEmitter the filename of an image and that image will
        be used as a texture for all created particles. The size of the particles can be
        controlled with maxParticleScale and minParticleScale.
     - Emitters that turn on/off in a scripted fashion:
        ParticleEmitter provides an inhibitEmissions variable that causes normal emissions to
        turn off when it's set to true. This can be used with a few threads to easily create
        "scripts" - example #3 shows how to to this. Individual emitters can also be assigned a
        lifespan, after which point they will turn off.


Late days: I would like to use 3 late days, assuming that's the right amount to have this graded as not late :)