GPU Field Presets

What it does

The pack registers twelve presets with particles-gpu-3d, the GPU particle runtime. game.gpuParticles.preset(name) starts one, and it runs until you kill() it. Each wraps its particles into a box around the camera: a raindrop that leaves one side comes back in at the other, so a bounded pool reads as rain everywhere the player looks.

The fields are tuned to read as what they are. Petals and leaves flutter and tumble; rain, sand and warp streaks stretch along their flight; snow wanders on curl noise; bubbles rise and wobble; and the space fields launch outward from the eye, so flying through them reads as depth. A preset is only a starting point: preset(name, overrides) takes any field config key.

Features

• Weather — blossom, leaves in red, orange and gold, rain at 120,000 streaks, snow, and a sandstorm streaking sideways low over the ground.
• Atmosphere — ash lifting and settling, fireflies in a warm night, dust motes in a shaft of light, and bubbles rising through water.
• Deep space — a starfield streaming past the ship, warp stretching stars into streaks, and a nebula to sit a starfield inside.
• A fixed cost — pools from 9,000 to 120,000 particles, set when the field starts, however far the camera goes.
• Overrides on every key — a new palette, a lower count, rain that lands on the scene, leaves that come to rest.

Good for

• Open-world games — rain, snow or a sandstorm over terrain with no edge.
• Seasonal and mood scenes — spring blossom, autumn leaves, dust in a tomb, fireflies over a meadow.
• Underwater levels — bubbles rising round the diver.
• Space shooters and flight games — a starfield to fly through, the jump to warp and a nebula around it.

Make it yours

Re-skinning is a single call: green summer leaves are leaves with a new palette and a lower count, and rain that lands on roofs and is reborn at the top is rain with collide: 'respawn'. A preset can be re-purposed too: bubbles with follow: false, a disc spawn, wrap: false and a rate becomes a column rising from a vent on the sea bed. Fields combine, so a space level runs nebula and starfield together, and a field of your own is a copied definition registered with registerGpuField3d from particles-gpu-3d.

A quick look

Rain around the camera, a re-skinned field, and the rain stopped:

const rain = game.gpuParticles.preset('rain');
game.gpuParticles.preset('leaves', { count: 4_000, palette: ['#4a7a2a', '#6a9a34', '#8ab040', '#3a5a20'] });
rain.kill();

Works with

• particles-gpu-3d and particle-textures — required: the GPU runtime and the particle frames.
• underwater-3d — the underwater scene the bubbles belong in.
• vfx3d-weather — weather on the CPU: a few thousand particles, but deterministic and running headless.
• vfx3d-* packs — effects at a place, with a beginning and an end.
• vfx-weather — the 2D counterpart.

Good to know

• GPU only: a headless game creates the field, but nothing moves or draws.
• Without fog, the far wall of the box shows as a plane where the particles stop.
• Rain, snow and leaves pass through roofs and floors until you override collide.
• The space fields launch outward from the eye, so a ship that banks hard does not see its streaks bank with it.