Oblivious Sponge

The (small) game I’m currently working on needs some spit and polish. I’ve always wanted to write a simple particles engine. Looks like an obvious match to me.

My current tech is C#, Managed DirectX and some HLSL. The particles are alpha textured quads using DrawUserPrimitives. A tiny particle class manages some dumb Euler integration (I’ll crank this up if and when…) and everything, well, seems ok.

Currently I’ve got three sets of fixed particles launched up into the air and subjected to the whims of gravity. They start with random angles and magnitudes, so you get a rough fireworks display:

Unfortunately I now need more information in my vertex structure so the particles can die off at different times - I’m already using color, texture and position. There’s a gap in my understanding between fuzzy-away from memory structures-managed-C# and hard-and-cold-HLSL. Time to tread into the unknown…

[waves]

I want somewhere away from my brain to store my geeky, techie thoughts. And somewhere to chronicle my journeys from them. Here will do nicely.

Now: time to do something and stop this structured procrastination.