Chapter18.Adding Special Effects

Chapter 18. Adding Special Effects

Although the majority of the great games rely on more than fancy graphics to sell well, the fact remains that having great graphics can only help. You don't want a game that's nothing but great graphics (you need some type of game play element that's fun), but just as the movies invest large sums of money into special effects, you should spend a little bit of time adding some special effects to your games.

One of the more common effects you see in computer games is something called a particle system. You'll be designing one in this chapter.

In this chapter, you'll learn

• How to implement a basic particle system

• How to render point sprites

• How to hook the system into the game