Press spacebar to show and hide particle variables. If the sprayer force is set to a non-zero value and the mouse is positioned towards the interior of the stage, the sprayer will launch the particles towards the mouse. You can also use the arrow keys to move the emitter around the stage! The variables around the edges of the screen will affect the particle display: Lifetime: Sets how long, in frames, the particles take to decay and vanish. Set to 100 by default, can be set as high as 130 or as low as 0. This is a minimum for decay time; particles must last at least this long but may last up to 50 frames longer. Twinkle: Adjusts per-frame variance of the particles' brightness effect, resulting in twinkling. Can be set from 1 to 100. Brightness: Sets the starting brightness of the particles. Higher values make them dim more slowly and remain visible for longer into the decay process. Emission Rate: How fast the particles are produced. 100 (max) by default; setting this below 100 when in turbo mode will cause wonky behavior. Stars: Changes the particle sprite to one with glare-stars. 1 gives half the particles the star effect, 2 gives the star effect to all particles. Gravity: How fast the stars fall. Low values tend to look nicer, but high values are fun to mess with. Sprayer force: How hard the particles are projected away from the emitter. When the mouse is not in the middle of the stage, particles will be fired straight up; otherwise, the particles will be fired towards the mouse. Spread rate: How fast the particles randomly disperse from the emitter. Setting this to zero with a non-zero sprayer force will result in a single-file stream; higher values will cause particles to zip away quickly. A variable for color (hue) does exist, but its use makes the simulation very slow and it it has accordingly been hidden.
This is just a quick demo of a particle system effect. It is rather processor-intensive, but may eventually see use in a game nonetheless.
