Particle Candy for Gideros

ar2rsawseen

Just in case someone did not notice:

vitalitymobile

Buy it! It is awesome when combine with Gideros! Cheer!

hgvyas123

kooooool

arcadia

Some performance test?
has a visual editor?

phongtt

Looks coool

XPRESSIVE

Hi Folks,
yes, Particle Candy is available for Gideros SDK now -glad to see that you already discovered the little secret =D

Both, the list of features as well as the API are exactly the same as you are used to. You can even re-use your existing particle codes and just copy and paste them into your Gideros projects. There are only some minimal differences between the Corona and the Gideros versions, we kept 99% absolutely identical, so it should be a breeze to copy your particle codes over to your Gideros projects.

We not only ported the library itself to Gideros, we also rewrote all included sample effects from ground up, re-polished existing ones and added lots of new (and quite spectacular) visual effect samples -see videos below. We also added a sample browser so you can conveniently browse through all the visual effect and sample codes.


WHAT IS PARTICLE CANDY?

Particle Candy is a very flexible, fast and powerful particle engine that was (and is) used by many commercial game titles and was developed with ease of use and performance in mind. With Particle Candy you can conveniently generate all kind of (realistic or cartoonish) visual effects in your apps and games like:

- Shots, fire, flames & explosions
- Clouds and smoke
- Lens flares, missile trails, sparks, stars
- Splats, splashes, water effects
- Weather effects like snow, rain, mist, dust etc.
- Particles that interact with the SDKs physics system

All effects are made of 'particles' (images that automatically fade, scale, rotate and behave as you specify it). You can create a smoke style particle type, for example and attach it to an emitter. Position this emitter wherever you want to and trigger it at any time. It then generates smoke particles at this position. You can even attach several particle types to an emitter at once, for example a smoke type, together with a flame style type, some sparks etc... whatever.

Usage is a breeze -see the included sample effects (video) -most of them are literally done with ~20 lines of particle code. The visual appearance of an effect depends mostly on the particle type settings you specify. This is no programming task -it's just playing with parameters (they are all explained in detail on the Particle Candy website).

The package includes more than 70! sample codes and pre-made, ready-to-use sample effects that you can either copy and paste into your project or play with it and alter it to any effects you like. The possibilities are endless.

If you have any questions on how to use Particle Candy or whatever, feel free to ask your question!


PERFORMANCE
We tested the sample effects in the videos above on a slow single core Huawei U8850, for example (which is by no means a competitor to a dual / multi core Samsung Galaxy or others) and had 60 FPS most of the time. The library is kept lighweight and as fast as possible, but of course it also depends on Gideros render engine and the target device and a lot.


WEBSITE, REFERENCE & HOW TO:
http://www.x-pressive.com


COMPLETE VIDEO PLAYLIST - Watch all Particle Candy videos



SAMPLE EFFECTS TOUR
These samples (and more) are all included in the package and demonstrate how easy you can do awesome looking effects -and of course you can do many more yourself! Your imagination is the limit. This video was recorded with the Gideros version, by the way (all sources included in the package):


FEATURES TOUR
This features tour is also included in the package. Just take a look at the regarding sample code to see how it works. All codes are kept short, clean and simple. The video does by no means cover all Particle Candy features:



NEXT: Widget Candy =D

vitalitymobile

@XPRESSIVE , +1 For Widget Candy! :x

talis

+1 from me for widget candy also. In addition one question @XPRESSIVE .
Is there be any discount for clients already bought and using corona versions of any product, widget candy, particle candy vs vs..
It will be great

SinisterSoft

+1 for your other libs (widget, text)

SinisterSoft

@XPRESSIVE Any coupon codes?

hgvyas123

yeah +1 for widget candy

XPRESSIVE

Is there be any discount for clients already bought and using corona versions of any product, widget candy, particle candy vs vs..
It will be great "

Sure, we still offer the bundle discount: buy one, get ALL the others (also upcoming libraries) half-off. So just enter your personal coupon code to activate your 50% discount for Particle Candy for Gideros if you previously purchased a Candy lib for Corona.

If you did not purchase a Candy library yet, here's a little treat:

Enter
---------------------
GIDEROSCANDY
---------------------
to get a copy half-off (coupon valid for short time only and may be removed without further notice).

We also started porting Widget Candy now. However, please don't expect it within the next few days, allow us some time to do a proper work.

talis

Wow great my old personal coupon code working. Thanks @XPRESSIVE . Looking forward for widget candy.

AlBob75

Thanks XPRESSIVE. I took advantage of the half price offer .

I tried the samples on my Samsung Galaxy S3 last night, most ran steady at 60 fps, but a few of them dipped into the 40's from time to time.

I noticed that some of the sound effects are in mp3 format. After converting these to wavs and using them in the samples instead the frame rate dips went away (I tried this on 2-3 of the samples and worked in each case). I think this is a Gideros thing, it prefers wavs for sound effects and mp3's for background music.

Really impressed with Particle Candy after playing with the samples BTW >-

XPRESSIVE

Good to know that -we'll replace them with .wav files to prevent false performance results then.

Here are more useful hints on how to keep a high frame rate and things that should be considered when creating particle effects:

PERFORMANCE HINTS

SinisterSoft

Thanks for the coupon code, just bought.

techdojo

I'm not sure how the library is delivered (assuming compiled lua byte code), but would it make any speed difference if the main particle heavy lifting code was written in C and compiled into a Gideros plugin?

XPRESSIVE

There would probably be a speed difference, but not a dramatic one. LUA bytecode itself is pretty fast, so the bottleneck when it comes to graphics handling is the SDK's render engine itself and how it handles graphics manipulation -and, of course, the graphics hardware of the target device. The render core does the major part of the work. You can think of Particle Candy as a director that just tells the SDK what to do with the images, but the actual work / graphics manipulation itself is still done by the SDK, not the LUA part. Looping through a bunch of tables and calculating the particle's behaviour (the LUA part) is nothing compared to the work that needs to be done under the hood.

ianchia

@XPRESSIVE I purchased Particle Candy yesterday and have to say I was *very* impressed and pleased with my purchase. The library is very performant, and the included sample code was very helpful and professional. Thank you also for the coupon code. I look forward to seeing Widget Candy running on Gideros.

All the best,

- Ian

XPRESSIVE

Thanks for the feedback Here's a new sample effect, by the way -it's also included in the package now (your personal download link always points to the latest version available):

loucsam

I only purchased it 12 hours ago, and already an update. Have to download it all again!

Looks like an excellent addition to Gideros.

Thankyou.

Cheers,
Max

loucsam

Will Particle Candy work okay with the newest Gideros version?

ar2rsawseen

@loucsam There should be no problem, do you experience any?

loucsam

I haven't downloaded the new Gideros yet.

whidbey

I thought it a visual editor for widget-candy and buy it too,and not my mind??

ar2rsawseen

@whidbey no it is a particle engine

whidbey

...i am wrong,and wasting the money... is there a edtior for it?

ar2rsawseen

@whidbey unfortunately I don't know, you would need to ask http://www.x-pressive.com/ themselves

whidbey

i could say about them as the email support is hard to listen from them...
disappointing..

loucsam

There is no editor associated with it. There's a bunch of examples of how to use it in Gideros.

OZApps

@whidbey, what are you after really? What editor are you looking for? For Widget Candy or for Particle Candy. The samples are quite useful to understand how to use it. There is an application called Particle Designer that helps create the particle effects visually and creates pex files (used directly by a couple of frameworks, including xCode and Cocos2d). I am not 100% sure if it is supported on Particle Candy.