Explosion particle effect

Question

I am working on a small starling based project and i need something as simple as a particle effect explosion.

I have the starling particle extension installed and have found plenty good tutorials to implement particle effects and found it works like a charm.

They all point to this brilliant particle effect generator: http://onebyonedesign.com/flash/particleeditor/

The problem is i can't make something that even remotely looks like an explosion. What am i doing wrong?

Answer 1

You just need to spend more time experimenting. Here is a config for that particle editor that is fairly close to the effect you want. Save this into a .pex file and load it into that editor, you'll see. You can then tweak it more from there so it should at least be a good start:

<particleEmitterConfig>
  <texture name="texture.png"/>
  <sourcePosition x="300.00" y="300.00"/>
  <sourcePositionVariance x="0.00" y="0.00"/>
  <speed value="500"/>
  <speedVariance value="283.33"/>
  <particleLifeSpan value="1.74"/>
  <particleLifespanVariance value="4.2"/>
  <angle value="0"/>
  <angleVariance value="360"/>
  <gravity x="0.00" y="0.00"/>
  <radialAcceleration value="0.00"/>
  <tangentialAcceleration value="5.88"/>
  <radialAccelVariance value="0.00"/>
  <tangentialAccelVariance value="0.00"/>
  <startColor red="1.00" green="0.31" blue="0.00" alpha="0.62"/>
  <startColorVariance red="0.00" green="0.00" blue="0.00" alpha="0.00"/>
  <finishColor red="1.00" green="0.31" blue="0.00" alpha="0.00"/>
  <finishColorVariance red="0.00" green="0.00" blue="0.00" alpha="0.00"/>
  <maxParticles value="471.12"/>
  <startParticleSize value="70"/>
  <startParticleSizeVariance value="70"/>
  <finishParticleSize value="0"/>
  <FinishParticleSizeVariance value="5.00"/>
  <duration value="-1.00"/>
  <emitterType value="0"/>
  <maxRadius value="51.28"/>
  <maxRadiusVariance value="0.00"/>
  <minRadius value="0"/>
  <rotatePerSecond value="72"/>
  <rotatePerSecondVariance value="66.98"/>
  <blendFuncSource value="770"/>
  <blendFuncDestination value="1"/>
  <rotationStart value="0.00"/>
  <rotationStartVariance value="0.00"/>
  <rotationEnd value="0.00"/>
  <rotationEndVariance value="0.00"/>
</particleEmitterConfig>