Creating and adding new bitmaps

The bitmaps the particles use cannot be plugged straight into the particle editor. They must be first defined with the particle text file. As your particle database grows, you may want to create separate text files for flames, explosions, smoke and other bitmap types, with the bitmaps in their own subdirectories.

As for formats, it is recommended to use .jpg for color maps and monochrome .pcx for the alpha maps. Other formats also work, but we have found these optimal.

The basic structure of a particle bitmap set is as follows. All the lines behind a double slash // will be ignored by the particle editor, and can be used as comments. You can also comment out sections of the file with /* for the beginning and */  for the end. Everything between the /* and the */ will be ignored. 

[your_particle_name]
{
       [Settings]
       Extension = jpg;
       AlphaExtension = pcx; // only applicable if blend mode is alpha
       BlendingMode = alpha; // available modes: alpha, additive

       [container] // every particle must have at least one container
       bitmaps\fire\flame01_%04d; // %04d means a cyclic number with 4 digits.

       [container] // additional containers can be used for variety
       bitmaps\fire\flame02_01; //can also use a sequence of exact filenames 
       bitmaps\fire\flame02_02;
       bitmaps\fire\flame02_03; // you can create a 'ping pong loop' by 
       bitmaps\fire\flame02_04; // inserting the sequence first forwards then 
       bitmaps\fire\flame02_05; // backwards. Duplicate filenames use no extra 
       bitmaps\fire\flame02_06; // texture memory. 
}

[your_particle_02]
{
...
}

The directory paths are recursive.