Particle Playground for Android

11 things about Particle Playground

1. Particle Playground is an easy way for developers to customize native iOS particle emitter classes (CAEmitterCell and CAEmitterLayer).

2. You just drag your particle image on the image well, modify some slider values and watch as the realtime preview shows you what you will see on your device when you hit the "Export"-Button.

3. You get a fully functional UIView subclass that takes care of all of your settings and displays the particle emitter just like you set it up in Particle Playground.

4. If you are looking for a particle emitter that works together with cocos2d or another framework you are in the wrong place.

5. The sole purpose of this app is to make it easier to customize the iOS-native particle emitter classes.

6. It's a cool piece of software which - sadly - does not support UIKit particle systems and is not on the app store.

7. Now you have 4 files: Your code (.h & .m file), the image (.png) and a savefile (.plist). The savefile is just so you can later open the emitter again.

8. Search for "Particle Designer" in your favorite search engine.

9. Manipulate the different properties until you have the desired effect.

10. Make sure to add the QuartzCore framework to your project.

11. Don't forget that your Mac is probably a bit beefier than your iPhone/iPad! A particle emitter with 1000 particles per second may look really nice in Particle Playground but it can really take a performance hit on the device.