pygame - particle effects

Question

I'm making a 2-d game using Pygame.
I want to add particle effects into the game I'm working on. I want to do things like spawn smoke, fire, blood, etc. I'm curious is there an easy way to do this? I don't really know even where to start.
I just need a base case I could expand upon..
Pls Help.

Answer 1

You might want to just make a class made of rects that go up and randomly go to the right or left each time it is updated for the smoke. Then make a ton of them whenever you want it. I'll try to make an example code below, but I can't guarntee it will work. You can make similar classes for the other particle effects.

class classsmoke(pygame.Rect):
    'classsmoke(location)'
    def __init__(self, location):
        self.width=1
        self.height=1
        self.center=location
    def update(self):
        self.centery-=3#You might want to increase or decrease this
        self.centerx+=random.randint(-2, 2)#You might want to raise or lower this as well

#use this to create smoke
smoke=[]
for i in range(20):
    smoke.append(classsmoke(insert location here))
#put this somewhere within your game loop
for i in smoke:
    i.update()
    if i.centery<0:
        smoke.remove(i)
    else:
        pygame.draw.rect(screen, GREY, i)

Another option would be to make the class just a tuple, like this:

class classsmoke():
    'classsmoke(location)'
    def __init__(self, location):
        self.center=location
    def update(self):
        self.center[1]-=3
        self.center[0]+=random.randint(-2, 2)

#to create smoke
smoke=[]
for i in range(20):
    smoke.append(classsmoke(insert location here))
#put inside game loop
for i in smoke:
    i.update()
    if i.centery<0:
        smoke.remove(i)
    else:
        pygame.draw.rect(screen, GREY, (i.center[0], i.center[1], 1, 1))

Or, to avoid classes completly:

#to create smoke:
smoke=[]
for i in range(20):
    smoke.append(insert location here)
#put within your game loop
for i in smoke:
    i[1]-=3
    i[0]+=random.randint(-2, 2)
    if i[1]<0:
        smoke.remove(i)
    else:
        pygame.draw.rect(screen, GREY, (i[0], i[1], 1, 1))

Pick your preference, and do something similar for other particle effects.