[Flash8] particles using bitmaps

[joa__]

in my eyes, the best parts of flash8 are the bitmapdata and filter methods.
now we are able to use well-known technics that come from opengl for example in flash.

i wanted to do some fire effect in flash.
a year ago i developed a simple particle system in flash7. this gave me the idea of what is possible using particles. but of course they are to slow to be implemented in a game.

http://www.je2050.de/fla.php?file=ParticleTest

now i wanted to do some fire effect in flash8.
the first thing that came to my mind was doing this using pixel access.
here is an example of an old-school fire effect. it is of course very slow so it is only 50x50 px and looks not very good

http://www.je2050.de/showroom.php?file=fire
(mouseclick changes blendmode)

then, there was a post on tinics blog. he also did a nice fire effect using flash8 filters

http://www.kaourantin.net/2005/08/li...ect-using.html

but because i really like particles i started with an idea that comes from opengl/directx whatever.

- load a greyscale bitmap
- colorize it
- draw it

a simple example with ugly textures and ugly code is

http://www.je2050.de/showroom.php?file=bitmapfire

and here some eyecandy and also to show the speed of this technic.
100 particles, changing color at runtime(!!)

http://www.je2050.de/showroom.php?file=bitmapparticles

i think they are now fast enough to be used in games for some eyecandy :o)

source:
http://www.je2050.de/stuff.php?p=/source/effect/
(fire.as is the pixel-fire and particle.as is used in the two other examples)

btw. two things i discovered about speed:
- it is faster to use _alpha insted of using a matrix
- it is faster to apply a filter to a movieclip instead of a bitmap