I'm Victor Martin Ballesta, student from CITM, and this is my personal research for Proyect II
A particle system is an object that emit particles, giving them their properties and managing them.
A particle can be simple texture with basic editions, like size, color and rotation.
A particle system usually requires a lot of particles to work properly. Because creating new objects is time consuming, we will create an object pool with a maximum number of particles.
An object pool is a component that occupies a certain memory with a certain type of object.
Object pools are useful for when you will create a lot of similar objects that are created and deleted continuously. Particles are a perfect example of that.
The particles will be lended by the object pool and will return once the particle system is destroyed.
Add the following files found in this Github proyect: Particle.cpp, Particle.h, ParticleSystem.cpp, ParticleSystem.h, ParticleSystemManager.cpp, ParticleSystemManager.h
Add the ParticleSystemManager to your App's Module System (and adapt any possible inconsistencies)
To be able to print the particles with changing colors, a new function has to be added to the Render module (This is made to work with SDL). You can find the function DrawParticleAlpha in Render.cpp
A possible extra inclusion could be making the blueprints in an XML file, loading them and having them separated from the code.
Another thing that could be added is making the alphas as a spritesheet and making the particles animated.
Now, when the particles change over time, they do it in a linear manner (LERP). Another addition can be to make different interpolation with different functions.
Making a Particle System WITHOUT a Game Engine! - Small Hedge Games
Object Pool - Optimization Patterns - Game Programming Patterns