Learning XNA 3.0

Creating a Particle Engine

Now that you've defined a custom vertex type, it's time to move on to the particle engine itself. You'll be creating three new classes in this section: ParticleSettings, which will hold settings for individual particles; ParticleExplosionSettings, which will hold settings for individual explosions; and ParticleExplosion, which represents a single explosion effect and will be responsible for moving, updating, and drawing all the particles involved in an explosion effect.

Create a new class within your project called ParticleSettings, and replace the contents of the ParticleSettings.cs file with the following code:

namespace _3D_Game
{
    class ParticleSettings
    {
        // Size of particle
        public int maxSize = 2;
    }

    class ParticleExplosionSettings
    {
        // Life of particles
        public int minLife = 1000;
        public int maxLife = 2000;

        // Particles per round
        public int minParticlesPerRound = 100;
        public int maxParticlesPerRound = 600;

        // Round time
        public int minRoundTime = 16;
        public int maxRoundTime = 50;

        // Number of particles
        public int minParticles = 2000;
        public int maxParticles = 3000;

    }
}

As you can see, the only setting at the particle level is the maximum size of each particle. When the ParticleExplosion class creates particles, it will create them with a size greater than zero and less than this maximum size.

In the ParticleExplosionSettings class, located in the same code file, there are more settings. (In C#, it's perfectly legal to have multiple classes within the same ...