Requirements

The only requirements for using DPSF in your project is that it must be an XNA application, and it must support Shader Model 2.0 or higher (i.e. DirectX 9 or higher).  Also, you will need to know how to program in C#.

To run the DPSF Demo source code you will need to have Visual Studio 2008 and at least XNA Game Studio 3.0 installed.

DPSF is a programmer's tool, not a designer's tool.  However, it would be possible to create a designer's tool from DPSF by a programmer creating a GUI interface from which a designer could specify particle system parameter values.  This would remove the limitless possibilities of DPSF however, as the designer would be limited to only changing the parameters provided by the programmer.  In order to harness the limitless possibilities and full potential of DPSF, you need to know how to write code.