Displaying Custom Particles

[trylobite]

Does anyone know how to display particles like smoke? I want to be able to show a particle at (x,y) with a particular png file. I'm not sure how to define the entity for it, however - I've looked at projectiles and explosions, but none of them are even displaying the png. Has anyone successfully created a custom particle?

[Krayt]

To your second question: What exactly do you mean with custom particle? I was successful in changing the properties of the smoke a custom train emits to be tinted red plus a few other things. Would that count as custom particle in your definition? Then I could share my approach.

Example definition of red and thicker smoke:

entities.lua

Code: Select all

redSmoke = {
    type = "smoke",
    name = "red-smoke",
    flags = {"not-on-map"},
    duration = 150,
    fade_in_duration = 0,
    fade_away_duration = 120,
    spread_duration = 170,
    start_scale = 0.7,
    end_scale = 2.3,
    color = {r = 1, g = 0.3, b = 0.3, a = 0.3},
    cyclic = true,
    affected_by_wind = true,
    animation =
    {
      width = 152,
      height = 120,
      line_length = 5,
      frame_count = 60,
      axially_symmetrical = false,
      direction_count = 1,
      shift = {-0.53125, -0.4375},
      priority = "high",
      animation_speed = 0.25,
      filename = "__base__/graphics/entity/smoke/smoke.png",
      flags = { "compressed" }
    }
  }

data:extend({redSmoke})

With color you can change the tint and opacity of the grayscale sprites quite easily.
Under filename you should be able to change the sprites to something else.

I figured this out when looking inside the file data/base/prototypes/entity/demo-entities.lua. There also is a function to create custom smoke by specifying some options. Here I don't know how to use this function from a file in the mod, which is the reason I copied all attributes of smoke manually.

Greetings
Krayt

[trylobite]

Thanks! I ignored the lua files starting with "demo," so I never found the code for smoke. I changed the filename and set the animation parameters to all 1's - might not be the best way to display a static image, but it certainly works! Thanks again.

[bobingabout]

A static image is just a 1 frame animation.

Note the demo- prefix on file names are the only files that exist in the demo. All files are used by the full game.