Alternatives to multiple sprite batches for achieving 2D particle system depth

Posted by Ergwun on Game Development See other posts from Game Development or by Ergwun
Published on 2012-05-10T14:08:15Z Indexed on 2012/06/10 4:48 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 356

Filed under:

XNA

|

2d

|

sprites

|

particles

In my 2D XNA game, I render all my sprites with a single sprite batch using SpriteSortMode.BackToFront and BlendState.AlphaBlend.

I'm adding a particle system based on the App Hub particles sample. Since this uses SpriteSortMode.Deferred and BlendState.Additive, I will need to have two SpriteBatch.Begin / SpriteBatch.End pairs: one for 'regular' sprites, and one for particles.

In my top-down shooter, If I want to have explosions appear under planes, but above the ground, then I believe I will have to have three Begin/End pairs, first to draw everything under the explosions, then to draw the explosions, then to draw everything above the explosions. If I want to have particle effects at multiple different depths, then I'm going to need even more Begin/Endpairs.

This is all easy to code, but I'm wondering if there is an alternative way to handle this?

© Game Development or respective owner

Related posts about XNA

Camera for 2.5D Game

as seen on Game Development - Search for 'Game Development'
I'm hoping someone can explain this to me like I'm 5, because I've been struggling with this for hours and simply cannot understand what I'm doing wrong. I've written a Camera class for my 2.5D game. The intention is to support world and screen spaces like this: The camera is the black thing on… >>> More
Using XNA ContentPipeline to export a file in a machine without full XNA GS

as seen on Game Development - Search for 'Game Development'
My game uses the Content Pipeline to load the spriteSheet at runtime. The artist for the game sends me the modified spritesheet and I do a build in my machine and send him an updated project. So I'm looking for a way to generate the xnb files in his machine (this is the output of the content pipeline)… >>> More
XNA - Strange Texture Rendering Issue Using XNA BasicEffect

as seen on Game Development - Search for 'Game Development'
I have been reading and working through Riemers 3D XNA tutorials to expand my knowledge of XNA from 2D into 3D. Unfortunately I am having rendering issues that I am unable to solve and I need a point in the right direction. I am not expecting the Models to look identical to Blender but there is… >>> More
XNA Notes 009

as seen on Geeks with Blogs - Search for 'Geeks with Blogs'
This past week the MVPs (myself included) were on Microsoft campus for the MVP summit. So I apologize in advance if you did something cool or heard of something cool happening with XNA and XBLIGs and it’s not in my notes. I did my best to stay on top of things, but honestly this community is fast… >>> More
XNA Notes 006

as seen on Geeks with Blogs - Search for 'Geeks with Blogs'
If you used to think the XNA community was small and inactive, hopefully these XNA Notes are opening your eyes. And I honestly feel like I’m still only catching the tail end of everything that’s going on. It’s a large and active community and you can be so mired down in one part of it you miss all… >>> More

Related posts about 2d

Are high powered 3D game engines better at 2D games than engines made for 2D

as seen on Game Development - Search for 'Game Development'
I'm a software engineer that's new to game programming so forgive me if this is a dumb question as I don't know that much about game engines. If I was building a 2D game am I better off going with an engine like Torque that looks like it's built for 2D, or would higher powered engines like Unreal… >>> More
2D Array of 2D Arrays (C# / XNA) [on hold]

as seen on Game Development - Search for 'Game Development'
I want to create a 2D array that contains many other 2D arrays. The problem is I'm not quite sure what I'm doing but this is the initialization code I have: int[,][,] chunk = new int[64, 64][32, 32]; For some reason Visual Studio doesn't like this and says that it's and 'invalid rank specifier'… >>> More
Need to know the origin and coordinates for 2d texture and 2d/3d vertices in webgl

as seen on Game Development - Search for 'Game Development'
Long story short, I know my coordinates are off and I believe my indices might be off. I'm trying to render a simple 2d rectangle with a texture in webgl here's the code I have for the vbo/ibo: rectVertices.vertices = new Float32Array( [ -0.5, -0.5, // Vertice 1, bottom / left 0.0, … >>> More
USB packets - receive wrong data

as seen on Ask Ubuntu - Search for 'Ask Ubuntu'
i have a little python script which shows me the packets of an enocean device and does some events depending on the packet type. unfortunately it doesn't work because i'm getting wrong packets. Parts of the python script (used pySerial): Blockquote ser = serial.Serial('/dev/ttyUSB1',57600… >>> More
Php 2d array as C# 2d array/struct

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I'm using MailChimp's API to subscribe email to a list. Function listsubscribe() is used for email subscription: public static listSubscribe(string apikey, string id, string email_address, array merge_vars, string email_type, boolean double_optin, boolean update_existing, boolean replace_interests… >>> More