Photon

Love2d has brought about a new wave of game development, making the process more welcoming to aspiring developers. There's a lot of work that goes into 2D games, from level and character design to story progression, and so forth.

To embellish 2D games, it's often that developers make use of particles to go for a specific look and feel. While those particles can be generated by way of Love2d's built-in ParticleSystem, additional tools to bolster that are freely available to everyone. Photon is an example, its particle-generating features being particularly noteworthy: tweak particle emission settings, change their texture and color, modify their size, and much more.

While getting started with this program may be tough for some users at first, game developers will feel right at home in the interface.

You can start by setting up the particles: change their emission number and the areas where they'd appear, then pick a texture. There are many options to choose from: circular, triangular, and rectangular shapes are all available, among others.

You'll notice that other particle proprieties can be changed: their sizes can be altered in multiple ways. Having multiple sizes means more variety when generating particles. This works especially well when increasing the Size Variation number.

In addition to the already generous customization options available, the software also affords users the possibility to color their particles. Multiple nuances can be selected, and pairing this with particles of multiple sizes will result in some spectacular visual effects.

Besides that, tweaking their speed and trajectory is also possible in the menu. To see the results, clicking Emit, then toggling the Setup function will engage the particles, allowing you to see them in real-time. Clicking Export will save them under two extensions — a .png and .pht file will be created, allowing the user to import them into their Love2d project.

Photon makes for a more intuitive way to work on your game's particles, making the process feel more dynamic and intuitive.