Java Open Particle System

JOPS is undergoing a small set of changes in order to be used properly in games. These changes include:

• Polar mouse movement in editor.
• Add static background geometry in editor in order to properly evaluate the particle’s blend modes.
• Eliminate hitch in PS instancing.
• Add support for texture animation.

These changes will be made during the next few weeks, as I am still recovering from very tiring months of hard work.

Tobias from Turborilla has released JopsMonkey, which consists of integration code to get JOPS particle systems to render in jMe1.0. I gotta thank Tobias for his interest in JOPS and his willingness to create the integration code. He did a great job and the performance is fantastic.

There are just a couple of issues left, one in regards to some texture blend modes not being supported in jMe1.0 - jMe2.0 is supposed to fix that - and one in regards to generators with absolute orientation. The last one should be fixed in a few weeks, once I get the presentation of my masters project out of the way.

You can see how it is being used in Mad Skills Motocross for the nitro-flame:

http://turborilla.com/developer-diary/a-particle-system-for-jme.html

The project page and instructions on how to get the source are here:

http://turborilla.com/open-source/jopsmonkey.html

By the way, Mad Skills Motocross is looking fantastic ! Can’t wait to play it !

Just wanted to say Merry Christmas and Happy new year for everyone !!!! There will be news for JOPS after the vacations !

I compiled versions of the JOPS Editor and libraries under Java 1.5. They are available from the usual download spot:

http://code.google.com/p/jops/downloads/list

This new version has a new addRemoveListener method in the ParticleSystem, which allows you to set a listener that is triggered when that specific PS dies and is removed from the ParticleManager.

Also the Xith3D integration code was changed in order to fix a few bugs.

There is a new version available for JOPS. Added an addRemoveListener method to particle system that trigger listeners once the PS is dead and removed from the simulation by the ParticleManager.

Integration code with Xith3D was changed to solve a few bugs too. It is still using one ugly hack, but it will have to do for now.  Thanks to dismal_denizen for warning of the previous bugs and testing the new code.

The editor’s renderer was changed to use triangles instead of quads. This affects texture rotation effects, since the texture cutoff zones will be different. Performance-wise, it is faster and in line with the integration code from Xith3D.

A bug was fixed in the Ant build file, as well as minor changes to the Editor code.

A new PS named “confetti” was added to the list, courtesy of Tobias Andersson.

There will be more interesting news in the next few days I hope.

There was a problem with the texture wrap modes that was causing the texture to blur out of the texture into the edges of the triangles. This was caused due to using CLAMP instead of CLAMP_TO_BORDER.

Before:

After:

JOPS - Java Open Particle System -  has been moved  from Sourceforge to Google Code. Nothing against Sourceforge, quite on the contrary, a lot of praise for it.

But I’ve released some projects on google code, and it’s easier for me to manage my open source projects if they are on the same site. On another note, Sourceforge has a lot of functionality I don’t need right now, and Google Code has a more streamlined and simpler interface to deal with.

Check it out at : http://code.google.com/p/jops/

My final change to 0.50 was to use an updated version of the openmali math library.

All sourceforge files were updated.

With this, the 0.50 version is closed. All further changes will create 0.50.xx versions.