Particles — emitters of transient targets

particles sprays many short-lived targets — sparks, smoke, rain, an explosion — each a tiny target that moves, fades, and dies. Emitters run in the stage's Advance phase, draw their variety from the seeded PRNG, and recycle particles through spawn so a fountain never churns allocation. Varied on screen, identical on replay.

Status: design. Not built yet.

What it is

An emitter is a source with a rule: a rate (or a burst), a per-particle lifetime, a spawn area, an initial velocity with spread, and a fate — usually a tween of alpha / size / colour over each particle's life, and a drift or gravity force. Each particle is an ordinary target that lives briefly and despawns; an emitter just makes and kills a lot of them, every tick.

Seeded variety — why it needed the PRNG

The spread, jitter, and lifetimes that make an emitter look alive come from the stage's seeded random, never math.random. So a fountain looks convincingly varied and replays exactly — the reason particles waited for the PRNG. Two runs from the same seed spray identically, spark for spark.

Pooled by construction

Particles from birth to reuse

A heavy effect can be thousands of particles a second; allocating each would churn. Emitters draw from a spawn pool — a particle is a recycled target — so the registry stays bounded and the frame stays allocation-free.

On the stage

particles runs in Advance: each tick an emitter spawns new particles (from its pool, using the seeded PRNG), advances live ones (their motion + tween), and despawns the expired — drawn through either the FireStorm hardware chipset or the always-available software chipset (a particle layer over any retro system). It reads its emitter rules, writes many transient targets, references no other system, and inherits the determinism contract.

Clients

Luau — require("particles"): make emitters, burst, stop.
AntBASIC — an EMIT verb for a one-line burst (EMIT "spark", x, y) over a named preset.