The final effect that we will explore in this chapter really adds some nice special effects to the game world, such as smoke, explosions, fire, and spell casts. Particle effects are a very powerful tool in your toolbox. With a little effort and without tons of experience as an artist, a developer can create nice special effects which add a certain level of polish to a game. These particle effects are composed of numerous particles, or small sprites, that have their own lifetimes and react to their environment based on certain properties. The real power of particle effects becomes apparent when you start to combine different sets of particle emitters to create a composite particle effect.

There are two main parts to using particle effects. The first part is creating the particle effect itself, and the second part is instantiating and rendering the particle in the game.