Particle Effects
Here’s a test of the new particle smoke system I’ve been working on for the Jetpack exhaust. This one uses 400+ separate smoke particles, but in the game this number will have to be reduced for speed. I would also like the smoke to flow along the floor, but this might be too taxing on the collision system, and I might have to just make the particles disappear when they hit the floor. Whatever we end up with, I think it will look pretty cool.
This requires Flash 9 - please let me know if you have any problems getting the example to run!

June 23rd, 2008 at 7:09 pm
Looks great!
June 23rd, 2008 at 8:15 pm
Yeah, that’s some nice smoke you’ve got there!
… Too bad it’s Flash!
June 24th, 2008 at 3:18 am
Very nice, I’m rather excited.
Spread the word everybody, jetpack2 is gonna be awesome!
June 25th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
Looks very promising! Can’t wait to try out this renewed blast from the past!
June 25th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
It’s awesome, but I still sigh when i think about flash. I mean if it was an .exe file like J1 then you could do so much more awesome crazy crap because computers nowadays are ridiculously fast.
June 25th, 2008 at 10:35 pm
I wouldn’t worry about it being Flash, not only is Flash 9 significantly faster than previous versions, but the original ran on 8086’s. Computers now are thousands of times faster than that, and the performance hit of Flash won’t matter much for a static-screen 2d game.
June 26th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Wow you can do smoke signals!
July 4th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
Hey this is great, I’ve been lookin all over the internet for another jetpack game. I played it a ton way back when I had windows 3.1. I think it was on a gamepack 40 vga games cd or somethin. Anyways, just recently when i was reflecting on how much fun i used to have with that old “jetpack game” i looked it up to see if i could download it, and i did and ive been playing it a ton for the past few days. Still fun as ever. I like some of the ideas of gameplay for jetpack2. On a design note though, it would be good if you kept him one tile tall, and kept him sort of stocky and stayed away from the lanky skinny feeling. I think the general gamer likes to have a “solid” feeling hero that they play. -Just some thoughts.
i also like your idea for multiplayer. That could be really fun. -i’m anxious to see the test game posted. i love jetpack
July 5th, 2008 at 10:05 am
Wow!
I thought about making a pure 3D version in C++ (I was going to learn), but never did. (I’m 17… go figure)
I can’t wait for Jetpack 2 to be made.
On my MBP it’s running at a steady 25.9fps when there’s just over 400 ‘things’.
Very cool.
Cannot wait.
Best of luck (it’s not theatre… - No, I can spell. I’m Australian…)
July 12th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
haven’t been here in a while, but all I can see is the RAM, Frame Rate, and Total things.
July 14th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
Are you sure you’re pressing space so you can WITNESS THE FURY?
July 26th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
When I zoom in, it pixelates. Why isn’t it vector? I thought vector was faster…
July 26th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
No, vectors are only faster in certain situations like rotation and some scaling. All vectors are converted to raster eventually.
August 21st, 2008 at 7:48 pm
Presidents come and go, but there will always be Jetpack. I’m so excited!!!
August 30th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
That looks awesome! I can’t wait for the new jetpack - considering the original jetpack is one of my favourite ‘old’ games.