Desirable Elements for a Particle System Interface

Table 2

Effects created in Demo, the features they demonstrate, and the number of lines of code used to create them.

Feature	Brief feature description	Fire and Smoke	Fountain	Smoke	Square Pattern	Figure-eight	Image	Sprite force	Animated butterflies
F1	Add and update particles	X	X	X	X	X	X	X	X
F2	Built-in PSI properties	X	X	X	X	X	X	X	X
F3	Built-in PSI Parameters	X	X	X	X	X	X	X	X
F4	Method to draw particles	X	X	X	X	X	X	X	X
F5	Method to return active particles						X	X	X
F6	Create new PSI properties	X	X	X			X	X	X
F7	Create new update functions	X	X	X	X	X	X	X	X
F8	Create new PSI Parameters	X		X			X	X	X
F9	Trigger updates on particle conditions	X			X		X
F10	Trigger updates on PS conditions						X
F11	Particles affected by environment		X	X					X
F12	Particles affected by other particles							X
F13	Update PSI parameters from events	X	X	X	X	X	X	X
F14	Update PSI parameters from user input	X	X	X	X	X	X	X
F15	Update properties of active particles		X	X	X		X	X
F16	Update a subset of active particles			X			X	X
F17	Animated particles								X
F18	Multiple particle images						X
Lines of code	N/A	187	76	107	89	61	322	413	275