Particle System for Weapon Impacts.md
I finally started using GameMaker’s particle system, which is handy for visual effects not tied to individual object instances (which could be used, but would become prohibitively memory-intensive quickly). At the time of writing, those impact flashes are still in use for the player.
I think this was the first time I sent my game out to friends. It turned out “Asteroids, but with recoil?!” was not the unalloyed game-mechanic gold I had imagined it would be. I’m just ahead of my time…
2021-10-16 I taught myself the particle system using the GMS docs and implemented weapon impacts on the enemy mobs that look really, really sharp—a combination of the spark and flare (built-in), with colour-shifting, rotating, and fading together to result in a sharp flash followed by what mimics retinal burn fading away. It looks great, and now I’m thinking about other particle implementations, like thrusters, shield overlays, dash-shadows on the rammers, and enemy explosions/debris.
I’ve sent the game off to Mitchell, Brian, and David after tightening up the waves, the on-screen instructions, and making a “You Win (for now?)” popup if you get to the end.