I''ve made a simple particle engine that does both fire and a water fountain rather well, but there''s one problem that I''ve been having. Can anyone suggest a good shape for a particle? I''ve tried using three square-shaped quads that are all perpindicular, two quads in the shape of a cross, texture-mapped quads with a circular pattern in the middle, and some others, but none of them seem to be too convincing in the water area. Any ideas?

Octagon? Something with more sides? A simple facet sphere shape? What about an asterik.

Particles are usually done as front-facing quads, but there is nothing to stop you from using two sets of perpendicular quads either.

Water can be done similar to sparks. Store the previous particle position, calculate the new particle position and draw a quad stretched between the old position and the new position. This gives the illusion of movement and motion blur.

Take a look at John van der Burg''s article Building an Advanced Particle System on Gamasutra.

Steve ''Sly'' Williams  Code Monkey  Krome Studios

Thanks for the link. I think that''s exactly what I was looking for.