Particle Designer v1.3 – Feature Preview
I thought I’d write a small update on Particle Designer v1.3. A LOT of work is going into this version and we are hoping you are going to really like it.
The GUI is getting cleaned up a little and we have added the ability to drag any image onto the device for it to be used as a background, so you can see how your particle emitter will look with blending etc. We’ve also redone the texture generation code internally as we found we had to handle issues with textures on ATI graphics cards.
We also thought it would be really cool to be able to see the particle emitters running on real devices without having to create your own test app.
It would also be cool to be able to change the parameters on an emitter in Particle Designer and see those changes in real time on the device.
Being able to change textures in PD and see that on the device in real time would be nice.
OK, how about the device view in PD rotating to match the orientation of the real device, that would be smart.
To finish off, how about being able to touch the device to move the particle emitter with your finger and have that shown in PD in real time.
Last of all, we thought it would be pretty cool to be able to perform all these functions on not just ONE device, but multiple devices e.g. having an iPhone, iPod, iPad or multiples of each all attached to PD at the same time, displaying the same particle emitter and all showing config changes in real time and to have all of this cool stuff down over the wireless network.
Hopefully you’ve guessed by now, but all of these features ARE going to be in v1.3. I’m almost at the point where I can do a video to show this stuff off cos I think its just so damn cool.
We are working hard on making sure that all of these features are as solid as possbile and as easy to use as possbile too. Whilst I don’t have a firm release date yet, all the features above are implemented and working, its just down to tidying things up and testing.
We really hope you will enjoy these features and that it will make your lives easier in the realm of particle emitter design.
Watch out for a preview video coming soon.
Mike
11 Comments
byron on June 13th, 2010
sounds rad, I can’t wait.
Tony on June 14th, 2010
When do you find the time to sleep?! This sounds great. Looking forward to it.
nexus6 on June 14th, 2010
Sounds really cool mike!! I love the particle designer, well worth the money.
Simon on June 14th, 2010
lol A very Apple style announcement
Crescentia on June 16th, 2010
The particle generator is fantastic. I incorporated it in my game “Peppers The Game”, it dramatically enhanced the game play in my opinion.
I encourage you to check it out, it is on sale till Jun 21st for $0.99.
Got to run, I need to purchase the Particle Designer now.
Thanks Mike
Jandy on June 16th, 2010
Love Particle Designer! Super Addictive!!!
How do you implement the Pex files with your book code?
mike on June 20th, 2010
Hi Jandy
You should just be able to replace the entire ParticleEmitter.h and .m file in the book code with the code from the example project that comes with Particle Designer.
Let me know how you get on.
Mike
Peter on June 29th, 2010
Hey Mike,
It actually looks like the book code has older versions of TBXML and TBXMLParticleAdditions. I see additional methods in the additions and you have a static implementation now in TBXML. This is all at a first glance. I’m trying to work through the issues now but the tileMap class seems to be affected now as well.
Peter
mike on June 29th, 2010
Hi Peter
The code in the sample project for Particle Designer does use the latest version of TBXML and particle editions. These are the versions that the final book code will be using as well.
If your replacing the ParticleEmitter code from the development version of the book then there will be differences which I completely forgot to mention.
You should not have to change any code other than to replace the instance methods with the new class methods in TBXML which are used in the Tilemap parser code.
Let me know if you have any problems with making the changes.
Mike
Tom on July 14th, 2010
Hi. I recently purchased your particle emitter software and I love it. It was well worth the 7$ (event though i see I missed a 99 cent sale but still its worth it!). I had one feature request.
Please don’t tie the particle image filename to the particle filename. I have to go hand edit it after export because I use the same white32 circle for like 10 emitters. When I import it sets it back upon export. Otherwise GREAT program!
SupahFly on June 13th, 2010
AWESOME! Can’t wait.