SoC Ideas Particle Engine 2012

This page is related to Summer of Code 2012

See the list of Summer of Code 2012 Ideas

This is a Summer of Code 2012 Idea

Description

Implement a particle engine in the animation engine [4]

Page for the idea: SoC Ideas Particle Engine 2012

A particle engine allows to draw pixel per pixel where each pixel's position is given by a piece of code or a mathematical fomula. This is used to display interesting physical phenomena like water flow, explosions or fire

The aim of the project is to add such an engine within the animation engine and, if time permits, within the terrain engine.

A good understanding of the animation engine will be needed, but the particle engine will fit quite nicely in the existing structure

for performance reasons the formulas will probaly have to be given in Lua, but other approches could be interesting

there will probably be some needs to go into the wesnoth-SDL infrastructure for the display part

googling for "particle engine" and "particle engine SDL" should provide lots of groundwork for writing proposals

There are 3 submitted student proposals for this idea

Alexandru Busila - Particle Engine

Abstract: I will be improving on the current animation and terrain engine (though I don't see why they are separate) by adding an extension to it. This extension will be in the form of an interface that contains all the rendering info for each frame (for the particle object) and will use SDL to do its rendering internally. This class will have programmable parameters that will be used through Lua.
See GSoC Chopper Particle Engine for more information.

Naman Gupta - Particle Engine

I’m going to be implementing particle engine into existing animation engine. Since Wesnoth current infrastructure uses SDL. I’d be using SDL to make my particle engine. I’m not sure but it’s going to be slow as SDL isn't really designed for particle. I’ll optimize it or Use OpenGL instead.
See Naman22 for more information.

Justas Tomkus - Particle Engine

Implementing particle engine in a library-like fashion, using existing game's graphic functionality and SDL library. Final version of this engine would allow to use it anywhere on map with other drawing functions, given required init is done.

In addition to simple pixel drawing, I am ready to implement version where small alpha transparent images are blitted for particles. Color transitions for particles wouldn't be a problem either.
See SoC2012 Bloodycoin Particle Engine for more information.

Whom to ask about this

boucman on irc.