Particle Designer 1.3 Released
After a VERY long cap between releases, version 1.3 has finally been released. This release contains the following.
New in 1.3 (75)
Particle Designer now uses a Quad based particle engine rather than using point sprites
Particle textures can now be up to 512×512
Particle sizes can now go up to 512×512
Particle rotation now supported
New element names for rotation are
rotationStart
rotationStartVariance
rotationEnd
rotationEndVariance
Images can now be dragged onto the device image and used as a background
Small GUI changes
Device orientation buttons moved to the device view
Clear background button added to the device view
Highlight ring on selected shared emitters
New iPhone image for the device view
Emitter config is automatically displayed when double clicking an emitter file or loading from the menu
Now possible to change the name of a texture being exported if it is not embedded in the config file
Possible to lock individual parameters so they do not change when using the randomize button
Fixed in 1.3 (75)
Life span variance is now being used correctly in Radial Mode
Randomize now changes all settings including the radial and tantengtial values
Known Issues in 1.3 (75)
The included ParticleEmitter class does not yet use the quad particle engine and therefore does not support rotation. This will be addressed in the next release. The new rotation properties are still available in the PEX file though.
To make use of the particle rotation feature some changes are needed to the particle system in cocos2d. These changes can be found at https://github.com/cocos2d/cocos2d-iphone/tree/develop
This covers the most requested features we have had. The next release (apart from any bugs found in this one) will be a complete GUI refresh to match the look and feel of Glyph Designer.
We hope you enjoy this release.
Mike & Tom
8 Comments
Simon on April 28th, 2011
Question: Are these (particle+glyph) on the Apple App store now? As I couldn’t find them and I seem to recall you saying that they’d be submitted?
Intrigued to know if there was problem and also to understand the review process, any difference from the iphone store?
mike on April 28th, 2011
Hi Simon
The review process is pretty much identical to the iPhone process. I did submit Glyph Designer but it was rejected as a framework we used for one small area contained a private API call. This was a pain to remove and as time passed we decided that as Particle Designer and Glyph Designer had been live for a while we would focus on simply supporting the apps direct.
We are just starting with the development of Particle Designer 2.0 which is going to be a major upgrade. This will be available as an update to people who have already purchased PD and we are planning on placing it on the app store.
Being just a two man team, it can take time to make sure that the app store version and direct version are synced etc so we decided to focus on features and stick with direct. Plus, with the prices being pretty low anyway, the 30% from Apple is a pretty big hit, so that did have an impact on our decision.
We are going to continue to review the situation though so things may change in the future.
Hope that helps.
Mike
Simon on April 30th, 2011
Interesting, so what qualifies as a Private API? As this is something that to date hasn’t been an issue for me, but is something that I don’t quite understand?
I know what you mean about the 30%, it’s a big hit, but in other areas of retail, the house take or adds on anywhere from 30% to 150%. So in that respect it’s on the low side :). But yes if you can manage and host it yourself and you’re reaching your target market on your own then you absolutely don’t want to give up 30% for almost no added value.
I’m working on a few Utility type apps at the moment, but as soon as I’m done I hope to try out both your mac apps ;)
headkaze on May 3rd, 2011
Thanks for implementing all the features I and others have requested, it’s greatly appreciated!
I have personally done experiments using quads and point sprites and found no difference in performance. You should be rendering quads in batches just as you do point sprites. Don’t forget to use a VBO too.
esael on July 17th, 2011
Strange. The clear background button is disabled.
mike on July 17th, 2011
Hi esael
The clear background button is enabled when a background image has been dragged onto the simulator window. Pressing clear removes the background image. If there is not image set then the clear button is disabled.
Hope that helps.
Mike
Dario on January 5th, 2012
I can’t register my self, i have the file .xml but if i double click the file, never works..
RogerDoger on April 28th, 2011
I assume doing rotation is going to cause some performance loss due to not being able to batch draw all the particles. Is this true, or is there a spiffy way around that?