- What is a particle system?
A particle system is a piece of software used to control the movement, behavior, and visualization of many particles, where a particle is
typically represented on screen as a texture (i.e. image). When the particles are percieved as a whole they appear to be a single object. Particle systems
are typically used to create special effects, such as fire, smoke, explosions, dust, clouds, rain, snow, water, sparks, fur, hair, magic spells, etc.
- What is DPSF?
DPSF (Dynamic Particle System Framework) is a framework for creating custom particle systems in Microsoft's XNA framework.
- Is DPSF free?
DPSF is 100% free to use in any application, although donations are appreciated :) If you are releasing an
application that uses DPSF for others to buy or download, all we ask is that you provide the DPSF Logo somewhere in your application, such as in the
opening screen or credits of your video game.
- Is it easy to create simple particle systems using DPSF?
Yes, DPSF provides Default Particle System Classes with built in support for things like velocity, acceleration, friction, rotation, external forces, etc.
so creating a simple particle system is as easy as specifying a few parameters.
- Is DPSF only good for creating simple particle systems?
No, DPSF is great for creating both simple and complex particle systems. DPSF was originally designed to allow you to create complex or unusual
particle systems, such as those often needed in research applications. DPSF allows you to specify your own particle properties and behaviors. So
if you wanted to, for example, give your particles a Temperature property and have them rise when they are hot and fall when they are cool, this
can easily be accomplished with a few lines of code.
- Are there any tutorials on how to use DPSF?
Yes! DPSF provides tutorials and their source code in the DPSF installer. The tutorials can be found in the DPSF Help.chm included
with the installer, which is also available online here. You can also view the particle system source code of the
DPSF Demo to see how all of the effects in the Demo are created and learn from them as well.
- Is there a GUI editor that can be used to create particle systems?
Not at the moment, but there are plans to create a GUI editor for creating particle systems from the Default Classes. At the moment all particle
system parameters must be specified by code.
- Is it easy to integrate DPSF into my existing project?
Yes, it simply involves adding a reference to a dll file. From there you can create a particle system class (or simply grab one from the demo samples
provided) and start using it in your application. You can have a particle system in your application within a matter of minutes.
- Can DPSF only be used with XNA applications that use the Game class?
No, the Game class is not required. DPSF can be used with games as well as WinForms applications; as long as they use an XNA GraphicsDevice to do
the rendering, as shown in the WinForms samples on the XNA Creators Club website.
- Does DPSF run on the CPU or GPU?
In order for DPSF to maintain its flexibility and to support the complex behaviors that it does, while being easy to use, it must run on the CPU.
However, since you can still write the GPU shaders that DPSF uses, you could create a GPU particle system using DPSF, but you would have to write all
of the shader code yourself (nothing is provided by DPSF for you to do this yet). In the future DPSF may get official support for GPU particle systems,
but at the moment DPSF is designed for CPU particle systems.
