One of the many great things offered in the Source authoring tools is Particle Editor. Waterfalls, fire effects, weapon effects, explosions, and more can all be created with particles. A particle system is a group of particles—2D sprites—with different rules applied to them. You can apply forces, transparency, and even parent particles to other entities.
In this chapter you will learn the following:
- Booting HL2 into tools mode
- Creating particle systems
- Importing particle systems into maps
- Creating the particle manifest file
- Having some fun with fireworks
The particle effects are created and edited within the game HalfLife 2: Episode Two, but you first need to gain access to the tools menu. Let's get started!
The tools menu needs to be enabled with a special launch option, -tools. It may also benefit you to run the game with the -novid option so the Valve intro movie does not play. To set launch options, open the Steam Library, right-click on your Source game and select Properties. In the GENERAL tab, click on SET LAUNCH OPTIONS... and enter –novid –console –tools, as shown in the following screenshot.
This will cause the game to quickly boot into tools mode and you can then load the console.
