holy crap a particle system..a fully bilboarded particle system...

ok, this project is very cool, I think, and was proportionally as hard. We have 1000 little unit squares in this scene with the texture of a generic star. The first way everyone makes these look like a particle system is by turning off the depth buffer. That way you can see them through each other. This is wrong. Without the depth buffer you can see the stupid particles through EVERYTHING. To fix that, I make the depth buffer READ ONLY when drawing the particles, this way, they don't write themselves to the buffer if they are behind something, but if they're in front, they blend with what's behind them. Ok, the bilboarding was pretty hard...conceptually too. basically it involves two rotations, it would be pretty simple if I could go back in time and explain it to myself, but that's usually the way things are.

Controls:

movement, same as usual

b - makes the particles burst like they do in the beginning

p - stops time

1, 2, 3 - toggle red green and blue respectively

Next week, the ripple generator, this particle system would make a cool comet in my solar system too!!