======================================================================== Minetest Advanced Particle Spawner Proof-of-Concept ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This is a pure server-side lua implementation of a proposed API for advanced particles spanwers for Minetest, which allows some particle effects to be achieved that are not possible with the existing particle spawners. The behavior defined by the API in this mod is currently implemented by sending a swarm of add_particle packets to the client (individually for each particle) BUT it could be done much more efficiently in the engine by sending a single add_particlespawner_advanced packet to the client. The key difference from this API compared to the standard particle spawner one is that you can define the particle's parameters as a linear function of a constant, time, and 12 random variables. The 12 random numbers are enough for each of the original random variables to have an independent/uncorrelated random value (i.e. you can implement a standard particle spawner's behavior using the advanced one) but interesting things happen when you reuse a single random value between different parameters. Included are a bunch of demo nodes, each of which creates a special particle effect that cannot be achieved with ordinary particlspawners every 2 seconds. Use a /giveme command to give yourself demo nodes: /giveme advparticles:demo# ...where # is 1, 2, 3, etc. Place the node to see the effect created around that node. Punch to remove. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ========================================================================